Recently, B.J. Sintay, PhD, Chief Innovation Officer for Fuse Oncology, met with Ann Miner, Senior Director of Radiation Oncology at Inova Health System, based in Fairfax, Va., to discuss their implementation of S!GNAL and how the solution has enabled improved charge capture and standardization across departments.  

With more than 160 team members across four departments, Inova struggled to keep processes consistent, Miner explains, and lacked standardized processes for charge reconciliation. When one of their trained, knowledgeable team members began reviewing every charge at their flagship location, widely identifying errors and mischarges, making it apparent that manual review would not scale effectively to meet their needs. 

In Fuse Oncology’s S!GNAL technology, Miner says “a solution and problem found each other at the right time.” Charge accuracy had been a primary concern at Inova, where teams “grew up as separate departments doing separate workflows, [with] different documentation and uses of the medical records system.” At the organization, “everything was created uniquely and individually. We were a true oncology service line,” Miner tells Dr. Sintay. 

Standardization among processes, documents, and appointment types across modalities is critical in this niche radiation oncology field where Inova offers complex modalities including proton therapy and advanced brachytherapy. Miner says they could not rely on a “blanket solution that would be dropped on us,” but, rather, needed a hands-on partnership that provided charge capture expertise, process integration, and standardization to identify opportunities for improvement and new efficiencies. 

The partnership with Fuse enabled Inova to: 

• ensure they were billing the right codes with the right documentation to support charges, 

• identify missing charges for new revenue opportunities, and  

• help their clinicians focus on patient care. 

Miner says that it’s apparent that S!GNAL was born out of a passion to help clinicians do their work easier and focus on what really matters. S!GNAL’s “expert layer” exists in an infrastructure that will last overtime versus one that is staff-knowledge dependent. Further, Fuse’s quarterly impact reports supply Miner with important performance metrics on how many daily errors the system is flagging, how many people are using the tool, and the dollar value of the errors compared to cost investment in S!GNAL, to name a few insights. 

Using the solution, Inova has seen revenues grow considerably, far outpacing Miner’s expectations. While she appreciates the many benefits S!GNAL brings to Inova’s clinicians, she notes the significance of the financial results. “[The business gains] help us reinvest in our patients and in our team.”