Glitch causes hospital billing headache

[unhappycamper]

Glitch causes hospital billing headache
By Bryce S. Dubee, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, November 8, 2008

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Some civilians who received medical care at Yokota’s hospital during the past couple of years may be wondering why they never got billed. Others have gone to the hospital’s cash cage only to be told that they owed nothing.

But soon they’ll have to pay up after the 374th Medical Group’s recent discovery of a computer glitch in its billing system.

In the fall of 2006, the Coding Compliance Editor system was installed at the hospital in hopes of increasing accuracy in coding patient and billing information, Lt. Col. Kelly Klein, 374th Medical Support Squadron commander, said Thursday in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes. The new system was to automatically generate bills for Department of Defense civilians, contractors and their dependents.

However, Klein said, bills were not automatically generated for all patients because of the glitch.

"During preparations for our (May 2009) Health Services inspection, we recently learned some patient encounters were ‘flagged’ within CCE and therefore a bill was not automatically generated for their care," he said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=58686