You are the assistant director of the HIM department. You have just been given the responsibility of maintaining the chargemaster. The person who was maintaining the chargemaster just quit, and to save money, administration has decided to add this to your current duties instead of filling the position. You only spent a day with the person who resigned to learn about what you need to do.

This is what you learned:

• The chargemaster coordinator did 100% of the maintenance on the chargemaster.

• If she had a question, she would call and ask the appropriate department.

• She was about 3 months behind in her maintenance.

• When departments started new services, she usually learned about them a week after they started, when billing problems arose.

• The reason that she quit was because she was so frustrated with her job.

You are concerned about what you have gotten yourself into. You know that you cannot do this alone, especially on top of your other duties, which were not decreased when this responsibility was added. You drag out your old textbooks, surf the Internet, and order a new book on chargemaster maintenance. After studying up on the subject, you decide to draft a proposal on a better way to manage the chargemaster. You want to do a good job because the director has agreed to send the final report to administration.

What plan would you come up with?