In the spring of 2014, I wrote a post about possibly getting over-charged for a hospital stay due to synchronizing EMR systems to the correct time. Similarly, this past weekend, when Daylight Savings Time ended, some patients may not have a second bed charge added for the hour that is repeated due to an occurrence in the system.
Many organizations may have the ability to manually update their charges in what is called the hospital billing account after a patient is discharged. This though is a step more than many organizations have the bandwidth to work on these days with all of the regulatory mandates that they are working on.
With Healthcare Payer organizations rejecting claims for even minor defects, this could be a major revenue loss for any provider and would need to have a consistent remediation for Patient Financial Services to be on track with their forecasts. It would be more than likely that they will not unless a patient reviews their charges more carefully. Data for the hour of the double 2am time on Sunday needs to be well documented and validated. Most responsible provider IT Revenue Cycle Management organizations have plans for the time change that have been scheduled far in advance and would be reviewed as I document this post. Is this another reason why we may not need to keep changing back and forth from Daylight Savings Time. Is this one of the reasons why the concept may be moot going into the 21st century? Time will tell.
Here’s giving thanks to all of the followers of Healthcare Interoperability. Thank you for your support and encouragement of this blog site. Thank you for being a Healthcare Advocate for all of us. It’s through all of our efforts that we will improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare for our families and friends, both in our country and around the world. I want to give thanks for our shared responsibility in making it through this paradigm shift with flying colors and for positively affecting better patient care through healthcare IT.
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