Council member Q&A: Metric expectations, reporting, and education

This month’s question was submitted on January 2, 2024, and focuses on CDI metric expectations, reporting, and education. Please note that questions and answers have been de-identified for the purposes of this article.

Q: I have a couple of questions regarding CDI metric expectations, reporting, and education for your CDI teams. I have been working on a CDI metrics report of the expected systemwide versus individual query rate, review rate, physician response rate, agreement rate, and expected daily reviews of a CDI specialist per day. I was wondering what you normally do when CDI specialists are underperforming? Do you send the monthly metrics report for the whole team to see—both the CDI team metrics and the individual metrics included—and/or talk to the staff members individually regarding their numbers (seeing what may be going on with work, at home, etc.)? Do you have specific improvement plans documenting that your facility follows when a CDI is underperforming? Additionally, do you have any suggestions for encouraging a CDI specialist to do more thorough reviews and to look for query opportunities?