Charge Description Master

The CDM segment contains the fields for identifying anything which is charged to patient accounts, including procedures, services, supplies. It is intended to be used to maintain a list of valid chargeable utilization items. Its purpose is to keep billing codes synchronized between HIS, Patient Accounting, and other departmental systems. It is not intended to completely support materials management, inventory, or complex pricing structures for which additional complex fields would be required. Given an identifying charge code, the associated fields in the charge description master file will provide basic pricing and billing data. All the additional information necessary for patient accounting systems to do billing and claims is not intended to be included in this segment; those should be part of insurance or billing profile tables.