Conference Update: Discover best practices for CDI teams

This year, we are also offering three exciting pre-conferences. One of our new offerings is the two-day “Building a Best Practice CDI Team” program, presented by Richard Pinson, MD, FACP, CCS, and Cynthia Tang, RHIA, CCS, CDI specialists and authors of the authoritative, best-selling CDI Pocket Guide.

Pinson will also be speaking at our main conference, presenting, “The CDI Operational Road Map: Uniting Physician Champions, CDI Team, and Medical Staff.” Tang and Pinson discussed their sessions over e-mail, and collaborated on their responses about what they’re looking forward to about this years’ conference.

Q: Why should managers send their CDI teams to your pre-conference session?

A: Our CDI Pocket Guide has become the authoritative, go-to resource for thousands of CDI specialists. In our two-day workshop for physician advisors and their CDI team members, we show you how to apply the principles embodied in the CDI Pocket Guide through best practice processes and key performance indicators that track improvement. We make clinical documentation easy to navigate, and we make it clear to all members of the healthcare team why CDI is so important for patients as well as the hospital. Our workshop is valuable whether your CDI program is well-established or just starting out, because participants learn new information and practices that they can implement for immediate results when they return home.

Q: What are some of the “highlights” attendees can expect from our session?

A: The focus of our workshop is “best practices” for the CDI team, but attendees will also get to expand and strengthen their knowledge of evidence-based clinical criteria for important diagnoses. In addition, during our program attendees will discover how to incorporate pay-for-performance and quality initiatives easily and effectively into their programs. Finally, they will get a common-sense approach to physician advisor participation and engaging medical staff. Participants will gain a more thorough understanding of the key diagnostic challenges that affect revenue and patient care, and simple but powerful techniques for evaluating and strengthening their CDI program.

Q: How is your topic important for everyone in the CDI role, regardless of professional background?

A: One of the challenges in developing a coherent CDI program is precisely that many hospitals have a hard time engaging all members of the healthcare team. Because our team includes both a physician and CDI specialist who each have decades of expertise under their belts, we are able to speak directly to each member of the CDI program, from coders to physicians.

Q: As a physician and an RHIA, how does your perspective differ from other CDI professionals?

A: Throughout our 12 years of collaborative work, we have always sought to combine clinical practice with coding principles conveyed in a simple language that puts coders, clinical documentation specialists, and physicians all “on the same page.”  Too often, one or more of these crucial stakeholders are left out.  We offer a rational framework for CDI based on our extensive training and experience, always supported by evidence.

Q: What do you think is the most important quality for a CDI professional to have?

A: Curiosity, a love for learning, and a confident approach to communicating with physicians.

Q: What are you most looking forward to about the 2016 ACDIS Conference?

A: A chance to show our new CDI products and tools offered in collaboration with ACDIS/HCPro, including our new mobile apps, and our innovative e-Learning solution for physicians: CDI for the Clinician ™.