Charge capture
Charge capture is the process of recording every billable service a provider delivered so it can be coded and billed — making sure the practice bills for all the care it gave.
Updated
Charge capture is the mid-cycle step that records each billable service performed during an encounter and passes it into the billing workflow. It connects what happened clinically — often documented in the EHR or on a superbill — to what is ultimately coded and claimed.
Complete charge capture means no billable service is dropped between the exam room and the claim.
In practice
Missed charges are silent revenue loss: care that was delivered but never billed. Because nothing downstream can recover a charge that was never captured, charge-capture accuracy is one of the least visible but most direct protections of earned revenue.
What is measurable is the delay rather than the omission. HFMA publishes total charge lag days as MAP Key PB-4 and describes it as a trending indicator of charge-capture workflow efficiency — a charge that arrives late is visible in a way a charge that never arrives is not, which is why lag is the practical proxy for a process no report can show directly.
Commonly confused with
- Medical coding: Coding translates a captured service into standardized CPT/ICD-10 codes; charge capture is recording that the billable service occurred in the first place.
- Charge entry: Charge entry is the data-entry step of posting captured charges into the billing system.