Traditionally, a thorough chart review involved selectively choosing which charts to review. This month, Circle has made much broader coverage practical.

Most reviews now finish in about two minutes

Improved

An 80-question intake review now completes in under two minutes for most teams, including those managing some of Circle’s largest configured reviews.

This change significantly impacts coverage.

When a thorough manual audit can take one to two hours per chart, QA teams are compelled to prioritize which records receive review. With a review time of approximately two minutes, a much larger number of admissions can be checked without incurring additional hours of manual audit work.

Furthermore, this review process becomes more practical and timely.

A utilization review lead can open a chart while a payor is on a phone call, identify any discrepancies, send the chart back for correction, and rerun the review once the documentation is updated. This feedback loop can occur on the same day rather than waiting for the next audit cycle.

However, a small number of reviews may still take longer. If you encounter such a review, please send us the patient’s information and the estimated run time through in-app chat, and we’ll take a closer look.

Reviews can now focus on a single treatment episode

New

Circle now syncs individual treatment episodes from Kipu, LightningStep, and Sunwave, including the associated levels of care. 

This allows for a more focused review, as it can now concentrate on a single admission instead of searching through a patient’s entire history. 

For appeals and pre-payment reviews, where the focus is typically on a specific stay, this results in a cleaner record. The relevant documents, dates, and levels of care for that episode are presented without interference from the rest of the patient’s history.

More control over products and permissions

New

Form filling, EMR access, and note generation can now be enabled or disabled at the organizational level, with role-based access controlling who can use each product. 

Additionally, shared templates can only be edited by an admin or the person who created them, ensuring that the review criteria your team agreed upon remain consistent across the organization.

Improvements

• Qualifacts InSync joins the connected EMRs. Patient rosters and admissions now sync alongside Kipu, LightningStep, and Sunwave.

• Detailed findings are now fully displayed in longer review outputs.

• Bulk archive for audit runs is now available. Historical runs can be cleared from the dashboard in a single pass.