ACDIS update: Meet the 2019 Conference Committee
It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to gear up for the 12th annual ACDIS national conference in Kissimmee, Florida, May 20-23, 2019. Nonetheless, planning is indeed already underway. The call for Conference Committee members went out at the end of June and nearly 75 ACDIS members answered the call.
The committee consists of more than a dozen individuals from various backgrounds, experience levels, and expertise. They are a wonderful group of people and the ACDIS staff wanted to give members the opportunity to get to know them better:
Barbara Brant, MPA, BSN-RN, CCDS, CDIP, CCS
CDI specialist
Cooper Health
Friendsville, Tennessee
Barbarajane.brant@gmail.com
Barbara Brant is a CDI professional with 25 years of clinical nursing experience and more than 13 years’ experience in documentation improvement efforts as a CDI, coder, and auditor. She has worked within health systems as well as outside consulting for documentation and coding improvements. Brant also has a proven ability to lead in the development, training, and implementation of CDI program incentives. With experience working as a Recovery Auditor Contractor (RAC), her passion is the importance of denial prevention and clinical validation for CDI professionals. She currently resides in TN with her husband.
Rhonda Chism, RN, CCDS
CDI specialist
Medical Center at Bowling Green
Bowling Green, Kentucky
RGChism@MCHealth.net
Rhoda Chism is a CDI specialist at the Medical Center at Bowling Green Kentucky where she helped launch the program in 2001. She obtained her associate degree in 1989 at the age of 19 and got married the same year, embarking on a career which spanned intensive care unit (ICU)/coronary care unit (CCU), medical-surgical, orthopedics, and the ED. She completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2015.
Chism and her husband have two 20-something children and enjoy “junking” at yard sales and antique shops. As Kentuckians, they also cheer for the University of Kentucky Wildcats. An avid reader of all genres (she’s on a historical fiction kick right now), Chism says her guilty pleasures are eating pancakes and playing bingo, but not at the same time.
Jennifer Cooper, MHIIM, RHIA, CDIP, CCS
HIM director and privacy officer
Hunt Regional Healthcare
Greenville, Texas
jcooper@huntregional.org
Jennifer L. Cooper completed her bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and her masters from the University of Tennessee.
Cooper has more than 14 years of experience in healthcare, having assisted in the development of the inpatient CDI program in 2012. She has had direct oversight of the program since 2013. Cooper currently serves as secretary for the DFW HIMA board as well as a co-leader for the Texas ACDIS Local Chapter. She is happy to be on this committee again and is looking forward to another great conference in 2019!
Debra Dallos, RN
CDI program supervisor
Sarasota Memorial Hospital (SMH)
Sarasota, Florida
Deb-Dallos@smh.com
Debra Dallos has nearly 30 years nursing experience with 22 years in critical care and six in CDI. Dallos is a past chair of the Florida ACDIS Local Chapter and a member of the ACDIS national Chapter Advisory Board.
She is an EXCEL award winner at SMH (house-wide employee recognition program), and the former chair of both the house-wide and unit-based Global Unit Practice Council at SMH.
Faisal Hussain, MD, CCDS, CDIP, CCS
Corporate CDI director in clinical services
CHSPSC, LLC
Thompson, Tennessee
smfaisalhussain@hotmail.com
Faisal Hussain is corporate CDI director in clinical services at CHSPSC, LLC, which consists of over 110 hospitals in 20 states. Prior to his current role, Hussain managed the CDI program at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset and was involved in numerous initiatives, including changing the workflow for patient safety indicators/hospital-acquired conditions, updating query forms for ICD-10 compliance, and creating action plans to collaborate with case management to reduce symptom DRGs.
He has served on the ACDIS Conference Committee in 2017 and 2018, and was a speaker at the 11th annual ACDIS Conference in San Antonio. He has also spoken on the ACDIS Radio show, and he is currently serving on the 2018 ACDIS CDI Week Committee.
Olga Kormuskina, RN, BSN, CCDS
Lead CDI specialist
Palomar Medical Center
Escondido, California
olga.kormuskina@palomarhealth.org
Kormuskina has more 10 years of nursing experience at Palomar Health, having spent the first five as a bedside nurse in various settings from medical/surgical to the progressive care unit, with focus on pulmonary and trauma patients. She enjoys teaching and preparing educational sessions and e-mail tips for providers and on-boarding new CDI professionals and providers by providing one-on-one CDI orientations.
Kormuskina has been involved in multiple projects and initiatives with a specific focus on quality and revenue. Coding/CDI auditing, denial appeals, and mortality reviews are some of the additional areas of her expertise. Her experience has primarily been in the inpatient arena, but recently she began developing an outpatient CDI program from scratch. It has been an interesting journey.
Sarah Matacale, RN, BSN, CCS
CDI specialist
Vidant Health
Middlesex, North Carolina
sarah.matacale@gmail.com
Sarah Matacale is a CDI specialist with more than 20 years’ experience in nursing specializing in cardiac critical care and hospice. She has nursing experience in a wide variety of inpatient and outpatient areas.
After suffering a large extent of hearing loss, Matacale regrouped, and refocused her career goals on CDI efforts and has been diving head first into charts ever since. Longing for a way to reach people, writing became an outlet and she has written about CDI on nursing websites and for magazines.
Lakeyshia Moore, MBA, RHIA, CHCO
Senior director of coding and reimbursement
Texas Health Resources
Arlington, Texas
LakeyshiaMoore@texashealth.org
Lakeyshia Moore is currently responsible for coding operations for 18 hospital entities. She has more than 17 years of HIM and healthcare experience, including in leadership, compliance, HIPAA, Recovery Audit Contractor, CDI, hospital coding, informatics, and project management.
Some of her proudest accomplishments include decreasing the discharge not final billed (DNFB), successfully implementing an enterprise document imaging solution, and leading a successful ICD-10 implementation. She is currently serving as president elect for Dallas Fort Worth American Health Information Management Association and she is on the nomination committee for TXHIMA. In her free time, Moore loves spending time with family and friends, mentoring others, traveling, and shopping.
Lorraine A. Neil, PhD, RN
CDI specialist
CHRISTUS Health
Corpus Christi, Texas
lorraineneil@yahoo.com
Lorraine A. Neil started her career more than 30 years ago as an emergency medical technician prior to making the leap into CDI.
Through the years, she has held various positions including critical care bedside nurse, and director, home health director, and hospital director of nursing. Along the way, she received her PhD in health care administration and she is educated in medical death investigation and medical legal consulting.
Chaka T. Prior, MPA, BSN, RN, CDIP
CDI manager
Piedmont Healthcare
Atlanta, Georgia
Chaka.Prior@piedmont.org
Chaka T. Prior has 15 years of experience in healthcare. Originally from South Carolina, she insists that Carolina peaches are sweeter. She transitioned to CDI, from critical care nursing in 2012, and quickly determined the move as one of the best professional decisions of her life.
In October of 2015, she joined Piedmont’s leadership team for CDI which is expanding in terms of acquisitions and integration, the comprehensive review, optimizing on software, and capitalizing on new trends in the industry. She served on the 2018 ACDIS Conference Committee and is a past Georgia ACDIS Local Chapter leader.
Though she calls work a “sometimes hobby,” Prior also enjoys watching movies, dining on good food, a good glass of wine, and ANY genre of good music. And anytime there’s an opportunity to be by a beautiful beach, she’s there.
Priscilla Stuart, MS, RHIA, CCS
CDI specialist
Baylor Scott & White McLane Children’s Hospital
Temple, Texas
Priscilla.Stuart1@BSWHealth.org
Priscilla Stuart has experience as coder, coding auditor, and a division coding manager where she led a team of inpatient coders responsible for seven hospitals in central Texas.
After attending an ACDIS CDI Boot Camp, Stuart saw an opportunity to take her skill set to the next level where she now enjoys sharing education with providers and serving as a resource to her peers.
Madhu Subherwal, MHA, MBBS, CCDS, CDIP
CDI manager
Torrance Memorial Medical Center
Torrance, California
Madhulika.Subherwal@tmmc.com
Madhu Subherwal is a physician, completing her medical education from Dayanand Medical College in India. She has been now held her current position for the past three years.
She began her journey in CDI in 2010, while completing her master’s degree in health administration from the University of La Verne, capping her education with her thesis “The Importance of Clinical Documentation Improvement Programs and Physician Documentation Practices in the Hospital Setting.” Her personal interests include walking on the beach with her dog, listening to music and attending concerts, and watching movies.
Between now and the conference in May, these folks will meet many times to iron out the most important aspects of the conference, including picking sessions, assigning educational tracks, and awarding the 2019 ACDIS Achievement Awards. Please take a moment to reach out, say hello, and thank them for all their hard work.