Case Study: Berkshire Health Systems, Inc. Automates ED Charge Entry And Coding Process For Meditech Users

Berkshire Health Systems is a private, not-for-profit organization serving western Massachusetts. With 350 beds, it is the region?s leading provider of comprehensive healthcare services, and serves the area through a number of affiliates.

The Business Challenge
Like most HIM departments, the hospital experienced the challenge of streamlining its coding process. Typically, a coder would have to access patient records in a minimum of three separate systems to review the patient data necessary to code and abstract a record. For Berkshire Health Systems, that meant patient EMR data from Meditech, scanned records in Valco and utilizing 3M?s encoder. The ED coding process was especially complicated because the HIM staff was responsible for entering the majority of ED charges. Further, because of the system integration involved between Meditech and 3M, there were batch processes that ran on a daily, overnight schedule that extended the coding and billing cycle.