Q&A: Charging and Reporting Bedside Procedures

Q: How can hospitals differentiate the cost of care for bedside procedures from other services?

A: The cost of resources used in providing bedside procedures is no less important than the cost of resources to perform the same procedures in a hospital department, even though the resources may be different (nursing vs. a radiology technician). The industry continues to move toward more data mining and transparency, which makes it increasingly critical to provider survival to report services accurately.

Reporting bedside procedures as a separate line item is one way to differentiate the individual cost of care for each patient. If all bedside procedures are considered to be included in a room rate, then the granularity of cost for the specific patient is lost. In that case, the claims data imply that all bedside procedures carry the same resource cost and allocation, regardless of the individual procedure. Because these same procedures are reported individually on an outpatient basis, the industry knows that assumption to be false.

For more information on discharge planning, refer to the upcoming book Billing for Ancillary Bedside Procedures Training Handbook.

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