The hospital process must be systematically thought-through multiple dimensions.

Process at the hospital: As a first step, it's important to understand the process of seeing patients at the hospital. How do they capture demographics? Which department (who) captures them? It's important to establish relationship and process of data retrieval with the relevant individuals. Whenever there's prior knowledge of the physician's schedule of patients at the hospital, the patients' insurance eligibility must be verified.

System integration: Ideally, the practice's system and the hospital system need to be integrated via a HL7 interface. This would allow the practice to share common data with the hospital. If the hospital doesn't allow for system integration or if it's too expensive, then the right approach would be to request a login for the hospital system. Staff at the practice need to track patients that their physician sees or is scheduled to see.

Physician compliance: Physicians must agree on a pre-determined process of handing over completed hospital charge tickets everyday.

Standardize charge tickets: Ideally, physicians must use a mobile or computer interface to document charges. These digital copies can be later retrieved by staff. If that's not possible then the practice must create standardized charge ticket books that physicians can use while at the hospital. These must be simple and easy to complete.

Measure lag among dates of service, billing, and payment: Charges lost due to timely filing are mostly due to services rendered at the hospital. Continuous measurement and improvement of lag days between date of service and date of billing allows results in faster payments and improved collections.