Integrating clinical, financial information: improving patient management.

The need for integrated financial and clinical information is becoming increasingly important to financial managers and clinicians alike. Typical billing systems collect only a small amount of clinical information. But by using billing systems more creatively--superimposing a clinical classification system on a billing system--hospital managers could retrieve clinical information from the billing system without undergoing chart review. The hospital's largest database, its billing information, could be used to more efficiently manager patient care.