Smart Pump–Electronic Health Record (EHR) Interoperability with Auto-Documentation is Associated with Increased Submission of Infusion-Therapy Billing Claims at a Community Hospital

Background Smart pump–electronic health record (EHR) interoperability has been demonstrated to reduce adverse events and increase documentation and billing accuracy. However, relatively little is known about the impact of interoperability on infusion therapy billing claims and hospital finances. Objective Our objective was to evaluate the association between smart pump–EHR interoperability with auto-documentation and current procedural terminology (CPT®)-coded infusion-therapy billing claims submissions. Methods At Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health (Lancaster, PA, USA), infusion-therapy billing data were collected for 158,379 patient days (a visit to the emergency department [ED] or 24 h admission to a non-ED unit) and divided into two groups: 78,241 pre- and 80,138 post-auto-documentation. The count and types of submitted CPT-coded claims were analyzed for ED/non-ED groups, inpatient/outpatient status and non-ED unit where the infusion was administered. Dollar amounts for CPT codes were calculated using Medicare Addendum B 2017. Patient day and CPT code counts were converted to annualized values to facilitate analysis. Results Patient days did not increase significantly from pre- to post-auto-documentation, whereas annualized submitted CPT-coded claims increased significantly by 14.5% (p