Patent ID: 8615403

Claim:
A computer-implemented charge router for use in medical billing systems having a plurality of charge sources creating charges holding charge data and at least one billing program receiving charge data to generate bills, the charge router comprising: a first computing system including a computer-implemented set of input translators receiving charges from the charge sources, a charge source including a billing terminal for at least one of a hospital service area, a medical laboratory, and a professional office of a physician, each charge being an electronic record including a bill for medical services, the bill including an amount to be billed based on a code describing a medical procedure, the bill being formatted by the originating charge source, the bill for medical services including charge data, and generating one or more universal charges having a common format based on the received charge data, the universal charge including the medical procedure code, wherein generating one or more universal charges includes implementing a translation routine for each received charge based on a billing format used by the originating charge source; a computer-implemented destination rule engine analyzing the charge data of the universal charges to assign a destination to the universal charges based on the charge data, the destination identifying at least one billing program; a charge tracking engine configured to store at least a portion of the received charge data in a log file in a searchable database together with an identification of the charge source and the at least one destination billing program for that charge data for a predetermined period; a charge modification engine, configured to apply changes to charge data based on at least one charge modification rule and propagate change information to the charge source and the identified at least one destination billing program based on the charge tracking data in the log file; and a computer-implemented set of output translators receiving universal charges including assigned destinations from the destination rule engine and converting the universal charges to a billing program format according to the billing program identified in the destination.