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5 leading hospital chargemaster software products
Hospital chargemaster software from FinThrive, Health Catalyst, Optum and other vendors can streamline CDM maintenance while using analytics to inform market strategy.
The hospital chargemaster, or charge description master, is a comprehensive list of prices for all the services and procedures a hospital provides to patients, including supplies and prescription drugs. Hospital chargemaster software helps hospitals manage this extensive list while ensuring accurate descriptions, pricing and compliance.
Maintaining an accurate hospital chargemaster is key to optimizing revenue. Robust management of the hospital chargemaster ensures accurate pricing, medical billing and regulatory compliance, especially as policymakers prioritize hospital price transparency.
Hospital chargemaster software enables providers to keep an updated database of all billable charges while also helping providers to hit on key strategies like improving price transparency and streamlining the revenue cycle. Key features of hospital chargemaster software include coding and pricing, data management, compliance and reporting and analytics.
Here’s a look at some of the top hospital chargemaster software on the market.
The author selected the following hospital chargemaster software by drawing on research from health IT market research firms like KLAS. The list of software is in alphabetical order by vendor name.
The Craneware Group: Trisus Chargemaster
The Trisus Chargemaster solution from the Craneware Group is an automated chargemaster management software designed to improve efficiencies, workflow and collaboration across clinical and financial teams.
The software relies on automation to increase productivity during the management process while tapping analytics to improve revenue capture. It also analyzes pricing integrity and aims to reduce compliance risks.
Notably, the Trisus Chargemaster software has user levels to give specific types of users the necessary information and functionalities they need to do their jobs.
The levels include "Reference User" for medical billers, coders and CDM coordinators, which give clinical, coding, financial and regulatory reference data, and "Collaborate Users," like clinicians, patient access and revenue integrity staff, who can view the chargemaster, request new codes and coding changes and access reference data. Additionally, "Power Users" for those who manage chargemaster content have full access to the software in addition to dashboards that identify chargemaster health, revenue opportunities and compliance issues.
The Craneware Group also reports experience with integrating the software with over 30 different patient accounting systems, including Epic, Cerner and MEDITECH.
The Trisus Chargemaster software recently won "Best in KLAS" in the hospital chargemaster software category, earning 89.4 points out of 100.0 points across company culture, customer loyalty, operations, product, relationship and value.
FinThrive: CDM Master (CDM Management)
FinThrive's CDM Master is a hospital chargemaster software used by hospitals to manage their chargemaster and maintain it. However, FinThrive will discontinue the software by Dec. 31, 2026, after which all existing and new customers will use CDM Management.
CDM Management is a cloud-based chargemaster maintenance tool with interactive dashboards that allow users to drill into pricing data, including by facility or code. The tool can also drill into Epic shell codes and alternate code utilization, as well as by payers.
Additionally, FinThrive offers user-specific views to deliver the most useful data to particular roles. Changes are also permission-driven so only those allowed can edit the chargemaster. Users can also establish specific workflows within the tool to facilitate communication between different users to handle requests.
CDM Management also contains proprietary pricing benchmarks, which FinThrive says are more current than public benchmarks, as well as real-time error detection, which can identify potential discrepancies during data entry.
Health Catalyst: VitalCDM
VitalCDM is part of Health Catalyst's Vitalware suite of revenue integrity software. The application boasts "smart" charge description master management through unlimited data consumption across hospital, professional, supply chain and prescription drug charges, peer review and benchmarking against up to 20 competitors and embedded workflows customized to a user's approval process with timestamps for historical tracking.
The software can also interface with an organization's EHR system. There are over 1,400 hospitals using VitalCDM, according to Health Catalyst's website at the time of publication.
VitalCDM took second among ranked solutions in the 2025 Best in KLAS awards, earning 85.0 points out of 100.0 total points. Notably, 97% of users interviewed by KLAS said the software was part of their long-term plans.
Optum Coding: Enterprise ChargemasterExpert.com
Enterprise ChargemasterExpert.com is an online application from Optum Coding, formerly Optum360, that helps hospitals maintain up-to-date and complete chargemasters. The application uses automation to identify critical edits at the charge line level, including coding and billing conflicts for services, pharmacy and supply chain.
The application also boasts analytical capabilities, including local and/or regional chargemaster comparisons to the corporate standard in multi-hospital system situations.
Optum Coding also emphasizes the compliance aspect of its application, saying it looks to reduce compliance risk with proprietary content. For example, users have access to a searchable billing editor e-book and other compliance-related coding resources through Optum chargemaster management solutions, such as RevenueCyclePro.com and EncoderPro.com.
Users can also tap into supportive data to build strategic pricing models. Through various add-ons, such as the Outpatient Margin Report (Peer Pricing) Add-on, users can pinpoint competitive pricing strategies and validate their prices.
Enterprise ChargemasterExpert.com is a customizable tool for hospitals to manage their chargemasters.
Panacea Healthcare Solutions: ChargeAssist
ChargeAssist from Panacea Healthcare Solutions is a cloud-based, enterprise-wide charge management software designed for chargemaster auditing, charge bench, charge change workflow management and regulatory compliance. The software is meant for both small and large enterprise organizations.
For an all-inclusive annual fee, users can access several modules within the ChargeAssist product suite, including CDMAuditor, Price Analyzer, Change Monitor and the Ultimate Research Center, a module specifically for coding and regulatory resources.
ChargeAssist includes pre-built auditing protocols and multi-file auditing to streamline chargemaster maintenance, as well as unlimited reporting capabilities to facilitate communication between coordinators and managers. The product suite also enables research and modeling for hospital, physician and other provider charges to support market and price analysis.
ChargeAssist comes from a 2016 partnership forged between Panacea Healthcare Solutions and Holliday & Associates, which originally developed ChargeAssist.
Jacqueline LaPointe is a graduate of Brandeis University and King's College London. She has been writing about healthcare finance and revenue cycle management since 2016.
