Conference Update: Top 5 reasons you should attend the 2015 ACDIS Conference; Speaker Q&A

We’re less than six weeks away from our annual conference! Here are the top five reasons you should attend the 2015 ACDIS Conference:

• What you’ll learn is well worth the time: In 2 and a half days, you’ll learn practical strategies to immediately improve your CDI program, resulting in better quality metrics and appropriate reimbursement.
• You’ll get to network with other CDI professionals… in San Antonio: Wouldn’t it be nice to trade stories and best practices with the top minds in CDI while strolling along the San Antonio River Walk, or at our pre-conference evening networking reception?
• Your professional value will grow: Boosting your skills in 2015 will help you increase physician response rates, sharpen your queries, stay up-to-date with the latest regulations, and ultimately raise your professional value.
• You can even earn valuable credits for attending: This conference qualifies for up to 13 CCDS CEUs, 13 ANCC nursing contact hours, as well as AHIMA and case management CEUs.
• Sessions are on the topics most important to you: At this year’s conference you’ll find something for everyone in our four concurrent session tracks to choose from, including Management and Leadership, Clinical and Coding, Quality and Regulatory Initiatives, and Innovative CDI. See the sessions here.

For these reasons and many more, the 2015 ACDIS Conference continues to be the place CDI professionals come to learn, network, and succeed. Click here for more information.

As the countdown continues, we’re previewing a handful of speakers to give you a feel for the educational sessions being offered. Here’s a sample of last week’s Q&A with Lynn H. Lowery, CPC, CFPC, who, along with Trey A. La Charité, MD, will present “Medicare Risk Adjustment, the New Payment Methodology: What Your Physicians Need to Know.”

Q: Why is it important to educate physicians on Medicare risk adjustment?

A: Medicare Advantage plans have been using this type of reimbursement for years, and now it’s expanding into the private sector. Medicare risk adjustment uses diagnoses to determine a patient’s risk, or likelihood of illness, which, in turn, allows Medicare to estimate how much medical care will cost. Diagnoses are grouped into a Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) and assigned a numeric value that represents the relative expenditures a plan is likely to incur for an enrollee with a given category of medical diagnoses. This information is abstracted from claims data. So, for physicians it is now important that they document the severity of all the illnesses validated in the medical record. Documentation and severity of illness will affect their reimbursement. As plans look for ways to improve the bottom line, this will affect physician practices.