Lately I've been talking a little bit more about some of the services I offer as it regards something called a charge master. I write about it often because I have found that there are many people, including in healthcare, that really don't understand why it's so important.

I have a friend who's also a health care consultant. He works with physicians to help them make their practices more efficient and profitable. He's also a former administrative level employee at a local hospital, being a vice president. So he has some knowledge about how things work in the hospital realm as well as with physicians.

We were having a conversation about charge master services when he came up with this beauty: "A charge master means nothing to a hospital; the only thing that matters is inpatient revenue." I can't necessarily say I was stunned that he said something like that, because I've heard the same thing from some chief financial officers. This usually tells me two things. One, these folks really don't have a good understanding of what a charge master can do, and to their living in the old days where inpatient revenue drove everything.

In today's health care environment it's outpatient services that really drives most revenue. I can see where a CFO would believe that it's still important to look at inpatient services, and I'm not saying that it's not. But in today's world you're more likely to drive more revenue and collect more money on certain outpatient services than you are with inpatient services. Since most surgeries are now outpatient rather than inpatient, and most of the other procedures are done an outpatient basis rather than on an inpatient basis, it definitely makes more sense to make sure that all of the coding and accuracy of a charge master is important.

Of course that's talking health care. What about other industries in other areas of business? I have found that the same type of conversation I have about charge master's with CFOs is the same type of conversation I have with small businesses and social media. One of the first questions I always get whenever I talk about social media and business is "have you made any money from it".

Whereas I have made money from it, it's one of those issues that shows kind of an antiquated bit of thinking. Old models for determining a business's ROI (return on investment) don't apply when talking about social media. Most of the factors in evaluating the ROI of traditional advertising and social media don't quite work out. Think about an advertising campaign. If you don't hire it out to a professional, the only cost of social media advertising and processes is whatever you're paying the person to handle it for you. Social media allows you to change advertising up on the fly, whereas traditional media something that takes a long time to put together and has many associated costs. Social media marketing can be something as simple as having a blog or a Twitter account. Both of those cost no extra if you already have a website or an email address.

Without statistics it's sometimes hard to convince someone that you're right when it comes to social media. So I offer some statistics. One, businesses have found that when they have a blog associated with the business that the amount of possible prospects goes up an average of 75%. Two, business-to-business leads goes up about 70% if you have a blog. Three, businesses that monitor what people are saying about them on Twitter so that they can address problems find their customer service scores go up an average of 65 to 75%.

Of course, there will always be people who won't leave statistics no matter what the business is and no matter what it is you're trying to tell them. Sometimes as lies; I've heard salespeople tell a prospect something that is an outright lie, but sounds good because they gave a statistic. So you can't just go off believing everything someone tells you because they can offer you a statistic. There should always be research of some kind to see if what people are telling you is the truth, unless you've built up a level of trust with that person.

Having said that, if you're prepared with your rebuttal before you even begin to advocate for something, more often than not you will find that people will tend to believe you, even if they don't immediately act on what you've told them. Even without immediate business, it's always better to be seen as knowledgeable on something while also being a trusted resource.