CASE $4-18$: Charge Master Maintenance

You are the assistant director of the HIM department. You have just been given the responsibility of maintaining the chargemaster. The person who was maintaining the charge master just resigned, and to save money, administration has decided to add this to your current duties instead of filling the position. You only spent a day with the person who resigned to learn about what you need to do$.$

The following is what you learned:

The charge master coordinator did $100\%$ of the maintenance on the charge master.

If she had a question, she would call and ask the appropriate department.

She was about three months behind in her maintenance.

When departments started new services, she usually learned about them a week after they started, when billing problems arose.

The reason that she quit was because she was frustrated with her job.

You are concerned about what you have gotten yourself into. You know that you cannot do this alone, especially on top of your other duties, which were not decreased when this responsibility was added. You drag out your old textbooks, surf the Internet, and order a new book on charge master maintenance. After studying up on the subject, you decide to draft a proposal on a better way to manage the charge master. Create a process that will better enable you to manage the charge master.