Data Mining Anesthesia Billing Data for Improved Practice Performance

By Joe Laden, Vice President of Client Management

All billing companies and in-house billing operations provide a package of standard reports.   They are generally financial reports designed to report cash flow and illustrate the performance of the billing entity

However, data collected for billing can provide a wealth of information for the practice beyond the standard reports.   Non-standard practice management reports are usually provided on an ad hoc or custom basis, sometimes at an additional charge.

These reports can be used to monitor hospital operating room efficiency, CRNA productivity, anesthesiologist productivity, medical direction effectiveness, and surgeon efficiency. Other reports can produce demographic information based on parameters such as patient age, zip code, gender and tenure with the practice.

Practice productivity reports are especially useful for anesthesiology groups that cover multiple facilities with a large number of anesthesiologists and CRNAs.

With the proper software, some reports can be done visually, for example, using map data to view patient population distribution.

Here are some examples of reports from anesthesia billing data that can be used to help manage the anesthesia practice:

• Case length in minutes by facility and category of surgery.
• Surgeons’ payer mix and patient revenue per hour of surgery by a surgeon or surgical group
• Cases beginning or ending before or after, for example, 7 am and 7 pm.
• Number of anesthesia hours billed by CRNA
• The average number of simultaneous cases billed by a medical directing anesthesiologist
• Average concurrency level of billed cases.
• Billings and case count by medical direction modifier: AA, QZ, QK, QY, QX, AD
• Percentage of patient dollars collected after the 1^st statement, 2^nd statement, dunning letter, etc.
• Analysis of deductibles by the length of billing hold.
• Post-op blocks and ultrasounds revenue by CPT code of surgery
• Analysis of individual surgeon’s requests for post-op pain services.
• Use of current case volumes to model projected changes in reimbursement.
• A daily report of the end of the last case of the day.
• 24-hour graphic time chart of active OB epidurals
• % of patients covered by Medicare who are under 65 years of age (usually disabled or ESRD)
• Zipcode location of patients and percentage with government insurance by zip code.

A billing company with a skilled data analyst can assist the anesthesia practice developing repots to meet its needs.

Joe Laden is the Vice President of Client Management, AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions, and a nationally recognized anesthesia expert and speaker, working with anesthesia practices across the country to improve their billing and coding operations.

While attending ANESTHESIOLOGY 2019 visit AdvantEdge at booth #951 in the exhibit hall to learn how AdvantEdge can be your ace up the sleeve. Clients that have signed since connecting with AdvantEdge at Anesthesiology 2018 have increased revenue by more than 8.7%.

AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions is a national top 10 medical billing company that provides billing, coding, and revenue cycle management solutions for anesthesia practices since 1989.   If you have questions about how AdvantEdge can improve your anesthesia billing and coding so that you are collecting every dollar that you’re legally and ethically entitled, please call us at 877-501-1611 or email info@ahsrcmstg.wpengine.com