Conference conversations: Poster presenters share process for query response rate improvement

Editor’s note: Kerry Termaat, RN, MSM, CCDS, is the supervisor of CDI at ProHealth Care—Waukesha Memorial Hospital. Termaat will be presenting a poster at the 2018 ACDIS Conference entitled “Eight-day process to improve physician query response rate,” with Sara Neitzel, RN, BSN, and Lisa Berghauer, BSN, RN, CCDS, CDI specialists at ProHealth Care. Make sure to stop by the dedicated poster viewing session on Day 2, 10:45-11:30 a.m. and see all the presenters’ posters.

Q: What made you want to submit a poster this year?

A: This is our first year attending the conference. We were able to receive approval to attend and at about the same time we received the email from ACDIS looking for poster presenters. We felt like we had a good topic to share with others so we submitted an application and were accepted!

Q: How did you decide on the topic?

A: Our physician advisor, Juliet Ugarte Hopkins, MD, CHCQM, was recently interviewed for an article in For the Record magazine in regards to our eight-business-day model for physician query response. It gave us the idea to show other CDI teams the affect they could make by using a consistent process in their daily work. This process was developed in 2014 and we have worked over the past three-plus years to implement and improve it. We have seen such dramatic positive results it seemed like the perfect thing to share with others.

Q: How did you develop your physician response improvement plan? Why eight days?

A: Our process was developed by the CDI team and our physician advisor, also in collaboration with the coding team. At times, it felt as if we were chasing queries for weeks trying to get a response. We needed a process that was consistent and easy to use with all queries, while at the same time, it needed to be user friendly for the physicians and hold them accountable.    

We decided on eight business days due to the staffing schedule of our hospitalist program. Our hospitalist physicians admit more than 75% of our inpatients, they work a seven-on seven-off schedule. By using eight business days, we accounted for the week they were off and allowed them a day to answer the query upon their return, while still being sensitive to the coding department and the need to get the chart final coded. 

Q: Did you work with any other departments while developing your process? If so, which ones and why?

A: In developing our model, we worked closely with our coding department. We needed to agree on the timeframe we were giving the physicians to respond and ensure it worked for both teams. We also worked together with our physician advisor as she championed this model to our medical executive team for approval. 

Q: What’s one thing you’d recommend to someone looking to improve their physician response rates in a short period of time?

A: We would recommend keeping anything you do or implement consistent to all queries, all physicians—everything and everyone treated the same. This makes it easy for the CDI team to follow and physicians know what to expect. We also could not have done this without the support from our physician advisor; she was a champion for us by holding physicians accountable to answering queries. 

Q: What’s one thing you’re excited for at the ACDIS 2018 conference?

A: Being our first visit, we are very excited to meet others that do what we do and to learn from leaders and innovators in our field. Also, we can’t wait to see San Antonio and enjoy the River Walk.