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Results Summary:
- Claimocity: 48.5/50
- Medaptus: 46/50
- Ingenious Med: 44.5/50
- pMD: 44/50
- MD Coder: 42.5/50
According to the 2020 Medscape survey data, a hospitalist spends an average of 18.5 hours per week on paperwork and admin in addition to the 34-38 hours with patients.
Billing make up a significant percentage of weekly administrative burdens, and a top-tier mobile charge capture process can streamline a provider’s workflow efficiency, shaving 5-10 hours off per week and increasing reimbursements (directly and indirectly) between 4-11%.
Without a fast and accurate charge capture solution, even the best hospitalists will have to work measurably harder for noticeably less money.
The top ten factors when evaluating charge capture solutions are:
- Price: User Costs and All Fees
- Speed: Time Costs for Accurate Billing and Coding
- Design: Look and Feel of the Software
- Revenue: Maximize Numbers and Monetary Value
- User Experience: Ease of Use and Ease of Learning
- Support: Overall Availability and Quality
- Integrations: Information Connections and Flow
- Reporting: Analytics and Reporting
- App Speed: Software Speed and Reliability
- Peripherals: Ancillary Values and Intangibles
How it works:
Over the course of ten weeks, ten separate doctors, software consultants, and practice managers perform comprehensive demos, survey existing and past clients, evaluate the technology, test the software, review and compare the top twenty mobile charge capture software solutions, and then submit independent reports. Each decision-maker highlights the benefits and disadvantages of each solution, scoring each category which then totals into a combined score. All the scores are then averaged and the top 20 are narrowed to the top ten and then the final five listed below.
#1 Claimocity: 48.5 out of 50
- Price: 4.5/5
- Speed: 5/5
- Design: 5/5
- Revenue: 5/5
- User Experience: 5/5
- Support: 5/5
- Integrations: 4.5/5
- Reporting: 5/5
- App Speed: 5/5
- Peripherals: 4.5/5
Company
More of a mobile medical technology company, Claimocity is the brainchild of several of the industry’s premier billing minds, and the only physician rounding software option on this list that was originally designed exclusively for internists and hospital physicians, so it makes sense why they ended up scoring the highest for hospitalist needs.
The good
Good price for value, world-class charge capture speed and revenue generation, an intelligent central census for rounding, and a “Practice IQ” litmus test full of evaluative tools and reports all work together to put Claimocity ahead of its peers. Combine that with the top marks for user experience and software design and you have yourself a clear winner.
The bad
Other than the top ten EHRs and PM software options, as well as a standout integration for physicians working in skilled nursing facilities using PointClickCare, their established integration totals and peripherals fell short of perfect.
Additional notes
- The technological basis for the app really stands out, simplifying the rounding process and automating non-critical tasks to speed up the workflow.
- The design had a clean appealing feel and ranked as the top among all the options.
- The layout came across as very intuitive and self-explanatory with customizable short cuts built in all over the place.
- The focus on capturing every single claim was very evident in the quality control and safeguard measures designed to keep charges from getting lost, identify issues, notify of needs, and encourage timely completion.
- Also offer an all-in-one practice management and billing software suite with EHR, full RCM services, contracting and credentialing, and business intelligence analyses.
#2 Medaptus: 46 out of 50
- Price: 4/5
- Speed: 4.5/5
- Design: 5/5
- Revenue: 5/5
- User Experience: 4.5/5
- Support: 4.5/5
- Integrations: 5/5
- Reporting: 5/5
- App Speed: 4/5
- Peripherals: 4.5/5
Company
Branded as a physician-founded company, medaptus has twenty years of experience empowering provider organizations and developing clinical workflow solutions that have earned them several KLAS awards.
The good
Relatively strong across the board with the exception of some technical issues in the app speed category, medaptus provides a high value with well established integration capabilities, good UX and support and focused peripherals for groups who value company longevity.
The bad
A higher price point for a good (not great) product, average user experience, consistent web-based software slowdown issues, maintenance fees, up to three hour delays for updates, and periodic app speed issues at inconvenient moments and you have the main pain points preventing them from the top spot.
Additional notes
- The software was well thought out, and medaptus realizes the need for additional measures to help protect the revenue cycle against processing losses and errors.
- The development of products for hospital systems gives them a broader perspective on performance software for providers in associated hospital systems.
- Well-developed product with a focus in the right direction that just feels slightly incomplete and could use a bit of a refresh.
- Includes a package of KPI visualizations that enables provides to achieve easy monitoring of trends affecting their revenue cycle.
#3 Ingenious Med: 44.5 out of 50
- Price: 4.5/5
- Speed: 4.5/5
- Design: 4.5/5
- Revenue: 4.5/5
- User Experience: 4.5/5
- Support: 4.5/5
- Integrations: 5/5
- Reporting: 5/5
- App Speed: 3.5/5
- Peripherals: 4/5
Company
In business for well over a decade, Ingenious Med’s focus is on enhancement solutions centered around improving complementary software values and provider performance in the charge capture and EHR systems.
The good
Ingenious Med understands the need to enhance the point of care charge capture with tools to streamline how information flows into the other systems in order to avoid revenue gaps and quality control issues that lead to lost or missing charges, accounts receivable inefficiencies, and revenue viability across the process.
With fantastic integration capabilities and comprehensive analytics-based reporting features that are tied with Claimocity for the top spot, Ingenious Med has a nice well thought out design and good user experience.
The bad
The price tag doesn’t quite match the value without claim scrubbing and continual issues with system lag on its web applications.
While the purpose is well thought out and defined, the execution falls short of the vision.
Instead of an amazing charge capture with well-designed enhancements to help give your revenue cycle an end-to-end intelligence, you end up with an above average charge capture that feels like a secondary focus, and a handful of enhancements that only add “significant” value if your other software systems are below average.
Additional notes
- Provides impressive metrics management to assist providers in improving their performance in value-based programs.
- Length-of-stay indicator is designed to manage throughput and reduce readmissions for overall cost savings.
- The app is compatible with all EHRs and pulls in real-time census data via ADT feeds.
- Integration with athenahealth enables importing patient appointments from Athena Collector while outputting charges back to the Athena solution for billing.
- The ability to easily see all dates of service with corresponding codes and charges, all on one page, is a plus for providers and their staff and offers definite time savings. However, delays in loading of screens can slow coders down.
- Users have the ability to leave notes in the system for a provider review and updating charges as necessary, and reminders help facilitate bundling of diagnosis codes for maximized charges.
- By not including a way to display the most commonly used or relevant diagnosis code, users have to utilize the search library each time.
- There are limitations to the integration of reports in this application, requiring users to run multiple reports and combine data better procured in a single report.
- A lack of customization on certain functions limits some of the benefits of Ingenious Med.
- Though users report the application is prone to glitches, updates to it are made on a regular basis.
#4 pMD: 44 out of 50
- Price: 4.5/5
- Speed: 4.5/5
- Design: 4/5
- Revenue: 4/5
- User Experience: 4/5
- Support: 4.5/5
- Integrations: 5/5
- Reporting: 4.5/5
- App Speed: 4/5
- Peripherals: 5/5
Company
Another established player in the charge capture market, pMD showcases a texting and data capture platform that integrates well to give providers a reliable solution for streamlining their medical billing processes and securely communicating with other clinicians and care teams.
The good
By narrowing the focus to charge capture and communication, pMD puts all the effort into the core processes rather than diluting their effort on ancillary benefits. As a result, the pMD Charge Capture™ does a very good job of decreasing the time between point-of-care and charges while streamlining communication efforts to help with coordination and overlap.
The integrations and communication peripherals are outstanding, support is mostly good, the price is on par with the majority of the top five, and the charge capture speed of the mobile app is right where it needs to be for consistent functionality.
The bad
When you move beyond the primary features of charge capture and communication, there are no other value points. The company’s mobile communication and data capture platform differs from similar solutions because it doesn’t include a web portal and lacks any meaningful reporting features.
While medaptus and Ingenious Med fall short of effectively countering the revenue gaps that arise from trying to integrate a segregated charge capture platform into the other software and service systems, they at least understand the need. pMD essentially washes their hands of it altogether and doesn’t offer anything, undercutting the intelligence of the system as a whole and creating a seemingly inevitable potential for higher missed/lost claims, human and tracking errors, and quality control issues that will impact your revenue cycle bottom line and accounts receivable reimbursements process.
Additional notes
- Simple and effective at point of care capture, pMD interfaces with all major electronic medical records, hospital systems, and medical billing systems
- There aren’t any specific issues with the speed of the pMD application, but it fails to provide enough streamlined features to generate measurable time savings.
- As with others on this list, lag issues decrease the platform’s speed and result in reduced workflow optimization.
- By not supporting a wholistic end-to-end revenue cycle, users have reported a smaller margin of revenue improvement.
- A lower score than its four competitors on this list is partly due to the lack of a well-developed graphical user interface that feels simplistic and outdated, and the picture quality in its telehealth feature needs improvement.
- Specialized reports consist of an ESRD dialysis dashboard for nephrologists, a length-of-stay report for hospitalists, and an auditing report for hospital rounding.
- For new users, pMD will automatically populate their contact list with providers in the care community who are already using the company’s text messaging.
- Though some users of this app were previously concerned about its inability to track quality data, updates to the software seem to have improved this capability.
- The HIPAA-compliant, secure messaging included in pMD’s mobile charge capture app is equipped with read receipts, giving providers the ability to follow-up with recipients.
- Customizable front-end prompts and back-end claim-scrubbing through the app prompt increased accuracy and reimbursement help to offset some revenue cycle gaps.
- The application’s MIPS Registry reporting tools help capture necessary data to assist practices in meeting CMS’s clinical quality requirements.
- Real-time interfaces electronically gather and route demographics, rounding lists, room numbers, and more.
#5 MD Coder: 42.5 out of 50
- Price: 4.5/5
- Speed: 4/5
- Design: 4/5
- Revenue: 4/5
- User Experience: 4/5
- Support: 4.5/5
- Integrations: 5/5
- Reporting: 4/5
- App Speed: 3.5/5
- Peripherals: 5/5
Company
Developed by Medical Design Technologies (MDTech), the MD Coder application is the kingpin of the company’s billing system and previously was awarded for being one of the top mobile charge capture options on the market.
In addition to offering digitalized data entry, integrated patient feeds, and seamless patient handoff, MD Coder boasts being the first to introduce a mobile charge capture application.
The good
As the primary application offered by MD Tech, MD Coder is designed for use in 25 different specialties. The company also develops custom healthcare applications.
This subscription-based software is affordable for most providers and offers a measurable ROI, even without features up to the standards of competing solutions. No long-term contract is necessary.
MD Coder can be integrated with most major PMS systems and some billing systems (using HL7).
The bad
Despite having had every opportunity to dominate this field, the software feels like good enough to make money was the end goal and the once-leading solution has failed to continually improve enough to go head-to-head with its primary competitors.
There have been occasional user complaints about the app running slowly at times, but the company’s customer service team is quick to respond to fix this issue.
Although MD Coder is touted as being able to fully optimize a provider’s revenue cycle, the lack of innovative corresponding solutions makes that difficult to achieve.
Additional notes:
- Features get lost in a busy dashboard, resulting in a lack of use necessary to fulfill their functionality.
- The application is also available in a web edition, but it’s overall display could use some updating.
- Customizable drop lists enable quick data entry for multiple fields that contain the same information, so users can browse specialty-specific drilldowns or search from a global database for efficient charge capture.
- Status indicators display whether quality measures are incomplete, partially complete, or completed for each patient.
- MD Coder contains the entire set of CPT and Evaluation and Management codes for all service areas and enables automated capture of MACRA/MIPS codes, with status indicators that show whether or not measures are complete.
- Users have the option to customize MD Coder to coordinate with some aspects of their current charge capture process.
- The application enables synchronization of data from multiple physicians into one database.
- Like Claimocity, MDTech’s pilot program lets physicians try MD coder for a full 30 days.
- A native integration with Kareo offers medical practices using Kareo a two-way interface to mitigate the need for paper face sheets, index cards, and superbills.
- Providers can digitally share patients with other physicians for handoff and have the ability to view all patients within predefined subgroups.
