News: CDI is a top priority for hospitals, survey finds

A recent Black Book survey of 2,920 healthcare leaders found that about 20% of respondents’ organizations outsource at least some CDI technologies and 65% of respondents from hospitals with more than 200 beds now outsource CDI audits, reviews, and programming—up from 24% in 2015, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

More than 90% of respondents from organizations with more than 150 beds, and which outsource CDI technologies, reported a minimum of $2.1 million increases in appropriate revenue and proper reimbursements in the third quarter of 2018, Becker’s reported.

Outsourced or not, CDI has risen to the top of 2019 budget priorities, as according to the survey, 89% of hospital financial officers claim the biggest motivator for adopting CDI solutions is to provide improvements in case mix index (CMI), resulting in increased revenue, and the best possible utilization of high-value specialists, the release says. And 88% of respondents’ hospitals confirm documented quality improvement and increases in CMI within six months of CDI implementation, according to the survey.

CDI professionals, however, know that CMI isn’t the best or only method of measuring CDI success.

“CDI is a key step in dramatically improving operational efficiency in healthcare organizations,” Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book said in the press release for the findings. “Failing to address flaws in documentation processes has resulted in higher incidences of errors, financial losses, and diminished patient care, and struggling hospitals will not survive on that old path.”

Editor’s note: To read the press release about the new survey, click here. To read Becker’s Hospital Review’s coverage of this story, click here. To read why CMI can be unreliable for measuring CDI success, click here.