Director’s Note: Welcome new ACDIS Advisory Board leadership

Please join us in welcoming our newest additions to the ACDIS Advisory Board—Wendy Clesi, Wendy De Vreugd, Mark LeBlanc, and Michelle McCormack. 

 

The board consists of a 12-member multi-disciplinary team, reflective of the ACDIS membership, and also includes CDI Education Director Cheryl Ericson. The remainder of the advisory board are elected by the membership each January and serve a three?year term.

 

The ACDIS advisory board provides expertise and an industry voice for the ACDIS membership and the wider CDI profession, serving as a resource for articles/interviews, contributing to formal and informal commentary to CMS, AHIMA, and other agencies (e.g., responding to CMS during the IPPS proposed rule commentary period, etc.), and performs other membership-related tasks as well.

 

Clesi is the director of CDI Services for Huff DRG Review in Eads, Tenn., and was the recipient of the 2009 “Recognition of Professional Achievement Award.” She has more than nine years of CDI experience and nearly 20 years’ experience in healthcare management. She served on the 2013 ACDIS National Conference Planning Committee, has been a frequent speaker at local, state, and national association meetings, and is a member of the Louisiana ACDIS Local Chapter. “It would be both an honor and a privilege to have the opportunity to lend my expertise and leadership ability to the ongoing development and support of the association and CDI profession in general,” she says.

 

This will be De Vreugd’s second appearance on the ACDIS advisory board, having served as a founding member of the board back in 2007. Currently the regional senior director of case management and CDI for Kindred Healthcare’s west region which includes California, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, she has also served on a variety of ACDIS subcommittees including its inaugural CDI Week Committee, the 2011 Bylaws Committee, and has been a presenter the ACDIS national conference. She sees the CDI field filled with potential growth areas and hopes to contribute to that growth by providing “guidance, direction, and education,” to ACDIS membership.

 

LeBlanc is the manager of the CDI program at Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis, with nine years’ experience in the role. Co-founder of the Minnesota ACDIS Chapter, he has also served the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC) as a committee and conference chairman, and was a presenter at the 2013 ACDIS Conference in Nashville. In his newest role he “hopes to offer some historical insight and guidance to the organization as it continues to support the profession. …No organization can be successful except through the work and support of its membership,” he says.

 

McCormack serves as the CDI program director for California’s Stanford Hospital and Clinics. With more than eight years’ experience in CDI, she brings an awareness of both MS-DRG and HCC code assignment and has been a presenter at multiple ACDIS conferences as well as at the University Health System Consortium’s convention, and state ACDIS and AHIMA conferences. In her work with the ACDIS advisory board, McCormack hopes to elevate the role of CDI by working collaboratively with other organizations such as the American Nurses Association.

 

Learn more about these great new volunteers, and all your advisory board representatives on the ACDIS webpage. www.acdis.org.