Transcription billing is a problematic part of the transcription services. The issue primarily arises from wide varieties of methods used for billing a transcribed report or reports. This contributes to the client's inability to audit or verify the billing and its accuracy. This in turn promotes the prevalent impression of padded, inaccurate and overcharged billing.

Some of the methods used include billing rates based on gross lines, visual lines, ASCII characters, words, pages, report or minutes of dictation. In addition each service provider utilizes their own non-standard definition for measuring unit whether it is a line, word, page etc. Majority of the clients in sheer frustration accept and pay the charges while holding the doubts about the accuracy.

Solution - Ascend Healthcare Systems LLC's SmartCOUNT®.

SmartCOUNT® is the state-of-the-art transcribed medical record billing system software solution from Ascend Healthcare Systems LLC. It is designed based on AAMT [American Association of Medical Transcription] standard definition guidelines of billable characters and line.

The definition incorporated in SmartCOUNT®

The line, defined as any line having 65 characters (A character is defined as any letter, number symbol or function key visible or coded, necessary for the final appearance and content of a document including without limitation - the space bar, carriage return, page break, underscore, bold and any character contained within a macro, header or footer). The number of lines in a report is calculated by counting all characters and simply dividing them by 65.

This definition eliminates all discrepancies resulting from the non-standard definitions and offers fully verifiable billing.

Why acquire a SmartCOUNT® solution?

1. It is a universal solution independent of whether the reports are transcribed in-house or by an outsourcing vendor.
2. The software operates on an existing PC or Server under Windows 98, Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating environment as an application.
3. Transcribed reports can be in WordPerfect, Word or ASCII formats.
4. SmartCOUNT® BASIC calculates and reports File/Report Name, Number of Pages in the Report and total Characters.
5. SmartCOUNT® ADVANCED offers retrieval and reporting of the Patient Name, Physician Name, Date of Dictation and Report/Work Type for each report.
6. It requires no additional hardware or training.
7. IT IS FREE.
   

Key features of SmartCOUNT® include:

SmartCOUNT®   Any Windows user can use the product without any training.

INPUT SmartCOUNT® input parameters are very simple. Specify client name, billing organization, billing period, identify the document directory where the reports to be billed are located, select document type of WordPerfect, Word or ASCII and select list of reports to be billed.

RESULTS
[BASIC] SmartCOUNT® system begins computation wherein for each document it reports Report Number [Document Number], No. of Pages and Character count for each report. The results are presented in a formatted Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

The result also provides the following summary:

1. Cumulative character counts by adding each report's character count.
2. Billing Summary including Total Reports, Total Lines [Total Characters/65] and Total Characters.

For a billing organization SmartCOUNT® provides an accurate billing details based on AHIMA standards. This eliminates all discrepancies otherwise associated with the transcription billing.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
System requirements are minimum. Any PC or Server with Windows 98, Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating system, Microsoft Excel and containing transcribed reports in WordPerfect, Word or ASCII format should be designated to run SmartCOUNT®.

COST

SmartCOUNT® [BASIC] It is FREE and you can download a copy here.

SmartCOUNT® [ADVANCE] - Please send an e-mail to info@ascendlimited.com.