Charge entry

Charge entry turns a documented visit into claim lines. Working from the superbill or the closed encounter, the biller enters each procedure code with its modifiers and units, points each line at the diagnoses that support it, confirms the date and place of service, the rendering and billing provider, the referring provider where one is needed, and the fee from the practice’s fee schedule. Many systems load most of this from the EHR, but someone still has to check that what landed matches what was documented.

The claim is only as good as this step. A wrong unit count, a modifier left off a timed code, a diagnosis pointer on the wrong line or a place of service that does not match the provider’s enrollment all pass through the system and come back weeks later as denials or, worse, as underpayments that pay clean and are never questioned. Charge entry is also where the authorization number, the accident date and the payer-specific fields a scrubber cannot invent get added.

The mistake is speed without a second look. Entry gets measured by claims per hour, and the review that would catch a dropped unit is skipped. Hold the batch, run the scrubber, and sample a few charges a day against the clinical note, especially for new providers and new codes.