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.
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.