From time to time you may come across an itemized bill that contains negative (or "reverse" or "refunded") charges. These are situations where a provider bills a line item but then has another line canceling out that charge by using a negative quantity amount like below:

If we are dealing with just one charge being refunded, like the ventilator charge in the example above, it can be very straightforward. However, if there are multiple positive and negative charges, like the glucose charges, it can quickly become confusing; especially if those charges are spread out over multiple pages and dates of service.

Thankfully, by using the appropriate filters, CAVO can quickly tell you how many units are actually being billed.

For example, lets say we want allow one ventilator charge per day, and every date of service has multiple positive and negative vent charges and we aren't sure how many to deny.

First, I will type "vent" into the text filter box at the top of the IB module. This will show only lines that contain the word "vent".

Using the summary box at the bottom, I can see that although there are well over 30 "vent" charges on the bill, only 6 are actually being billed once the negative charges are considered. If I didn't want to allow any ventilator charges, I would know I need to deny 6 charges to get to 0 allows charges. However, if I want to allow one charge per day and deny any extras, then I would need to move on to Step 2.

While maintaining the "vent" filter at the top, now also apply a filter on the DOS column so we can check each day at a time. Once filtered for a single day, I can see that actually only one charge was effectively billed on this DOS.

So for this day, there is nothing I need to deny here. I can now filter for the next date and see if the total amount billed ever exceeds 1.

If you have any questions about this process, please reach out to us in the CAVO chat bubble and we will be happy to walk through your example.