Real User Insights: Evaluating the Impact of hbRecon at Three Hospitals


Discrepancies between coding data and clinical registry data can significantly impact reimbursements in a cardiac services department — yet many health systems are unable to recognize these missed revenue opportunities without a comprehensive coding audit.

The hbRecon solution was selected by the following three hospitals to help identify and resolve these discrepancies in their cardiac services billing departments. Here, we share their experiences and explore how hbRecon’s clinical registry data-based audits helped build a more profitable and efficient cardiac services department in each organization.


Evaluating the hbRecon Impact: Explore Three User Experiences

1. How does your hospital use clinical registry data?

  • Jerod Weimer, Bakersfield Memorial Hospital: We use the registries to measure, monitor, and improve our patient care and outcomes.
  • Kerry Webb, Chandler Regional Medical Center and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center: We use our data for measuring performance, quality goals and performance improvement.
  • Beth Kennalley: To measure and monitor clinical performance, quality goal performance, and performance improvement activities.

2. What do you find most valuable about collecting registry data?

  • Jerod Weimer, Bakersfield Memorial Hospital: The ability to keep our “finger on the pulse” of the systems involved in our patient care and program performance.
  • Kerry Webb, Chandler Regional Medical Center and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center: The data helps to identify any processes that may need to be improved and usually end up uncovering other things that can use improvement.
  • Beth Kennalley: Identifying performance opportunities and excellence.

3. How has hbRecon fit into your current processes and workflows?

  • Jerod Weimer, Bakersfield Memorial Hospital: hbRecon has allowed us to expand the awareness and performance of our documentation and interdepartmental working relationship by closely tying the clinical data to the administrative data.
  • Kerry Webb, Chandler Regional Medical Center and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center: It fits in looking at and reviewing the data when I have a chance. Sometimes, it is right after it is uploaded, and other times, it takes a week or two.
  • Beth Kennalley: hbRecon is a monthly review of any abstraction and coding differences on both our Open Heart and CathPCI cases, and has taken less and less time as we have improved performance in both areas. It allows me to quickly and accurately review both data sets to ensure they accurately reflect the case that was performed.

4. What do you find most valuable about using hbRecon?

  • Jerod Weimer, Bakersfield Memorial Hospital: hbRecon’s most valuable impact has come from increased accuracy in both clinical and administrative documentation.
  • Kerry Webb, Chandler Regional Medical Center and Mercy Gilbert Medical Center: hbRecon has helped identify documentation issues on the physician’s end. It has also helped our coding team to improve their system when it or the people are combing through the charts.
  • Beth Kennalley: The ability to compare two independent chart abstractions is invaluable but would take too much time to do manually to be useful. This tool allows us to do this and find multiple errors in a short amount of time, and to submit this information for correction in a timely manner. The tool has allowed us to be reassured that our billing is accurate in these areas.

Realize These Financial and Operational Benefits in Your Organization

Each of these hospitals’ experiences highlights the critical importance of accurate coding for cardiac services, as well as the challenges of comprehensively capturing the services provided during each episode of care. The hbRecon toolkit equips health systems with a more granular audit based on clinical registry data to reduce under and over-billing, accurately reflect patient acuity and case mix index (CMI), and drive proper reimbursements. Through step-by-step improvements in coding quality, with a core focus on enhancing interdepartmental collaboration, hbRecon is helping health systems maximize accurate revenue capture for their cardiac services.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo to discover how hbRecon can improve cardiac services profitability in your health system.

Heartbase, Inc. Officially Supports the STS Adult Cardiac Beta Blocker & General Thoracic Neo-Adjuvant Supplemental Forms


CHICAGO, IL – We are excited to announce that heartbase™ officially supports the STS Adult Cardiac Beta Blocker Supplemental Form for v4.20.2 and General Thoracic Neo-Adjuvant Supplemental Form for v5.21.1. On April 30th, heartbase clinical specialist Carmen Ernst, RN, BSN, will hold a special training class covering the ins and outs of these optional updates. Heartbase customers can click here to register.

From the STS:
“Advances in medicine, technology and research interests has generated the need for The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) to collect additional data from sites related to the already existing registries: Adult Cardiac Surgery Database (ACSD), General Thoracic Surgery Database (GTSD), and Congenital Heart Surgery Database (CHSD). This information is needed in a timely manner and cannot wait until the registries have completed a full data specification upgrade. To facilitate obtaining this data as soon as possible, the STS is providing REDCap web pages and is asking sites to voluntarily use these forms for recording the supplemental data.

Many sites have expressed the desire to not have to switch to a different platform for recording any additional information, preferring to keep all data entry within their current vendor software. For this reason, STS is making the specifications for these data collection forms available to software vendors who are already certified on the latest versions of each registry so the new fields can be incorporated into their existing software. There is no requirement from the STS for vendors to incorporate these fields into their software and doing so is completely voluntary.”

Participation using hbCOR offers:

  • A single location to capture and audit both standard and supplemental STS ACSD & GTSD variables.
  • Ability to run AD HOC reports using the hbQuery Tool for the supplemental fields.
  • Facilitated submission to REDCap – vendors must submit the supplemental data to the STS on behalf of the organization.

Please contact the heartbase Sales Team (sales@heartbase.net) with any questions about adding this optional form to your heartbase hbCOR instance.


About heartbase, Inc.

Heartbase™ is a privately-held company founded in 1992 and designed to be intuitive & centered on the needs of the clinician. Since our inception, we have known that the most effective way to develop a robust and reflexive software platform is through collegial partnerships with our clinical & financial users. Working directly with our customers – listening to their concerns and honoring their suggestions for improvement – allows us to build a tool that is fast, efficient, and tailored specifically to the individual needs of each healthcare institution.

Our primary major business lines are the following: hbCOR, Data Capture & Reporting; hbAnalytics, Realtime Clinical & Financial Dashboards; hbRecon, Coding Reconciliation & Revenue Generation; & hbNote, Data First Structured Reporting.

Request a Demo Want to see how we can help you with collection and reporting?