Note from the ACDIS Director: 2020 vision and a look at what’s coming up on the ACDIS Podcast

by Brian Murphy

Hello, and welcome to the ACDIS Podcast: Talking CDI. The nation’s only podcast dedicated to the clinical documentation integrity profession.

With that familiar opening, we cranked through 27 episodes in 2020, a year like no other. And we still have two more shows to go.

As I think about it, the ACDIS Podcast sums up 2020 pretty well: Staying in touch while we’re apart. Talking and getting educated, while remote, through virtual connections.

We’ve had some technical hiccups here and there, mostly related to my own internet woes. Annoying, but for 2020, small potatoes, I’ll take it. In general, I love everything about the podcast, and find it to be one of the more rewarding parts of my job. I love playing host to the brightest minds in CDI every other week, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it too.

For those who might be new to the podcast, we cover a lot of ground on the show. In 2020, we featured our usual heavy dose of clinical topics, including pressure ulcers and injuries, heart failure, sepsis and cytokine syndrome, new guidelines for community acquired pneumonia, and of course COVID-19. Dr. Cesar Limjoco kicked us off this year with a session on getting at the clinical truth in record reviews, and I’m pleased to announce he’ll be joining us again for the first episode of 2021 on postoperative respiratory failure.

We also covered a fair share of regulatory issues and audit-related topics, even hosting Joseph Girardi of the Office of Inspector General (OIG), who came on the podcast in September to cover the agency’s national audit on severe malnutrition that had everyone buzzing. We covered 2020 changes to the CMS-HCC model, and many “In the News” segments featured forthcoming changes in the IPPS and OPPS final rules, and important issues like pricing transparency and pay-for-performance.

We hosted shows on leadership and department management, too. Some great episodes worth a re-watch include CDI scorecards with Dawn Diven of West Virginia University Medicine, a new CDI system specialist position at Banner Health with Jessica Risner, and lessons in leadership with Adelaide LaRosa of Catholic Health Services of Long Island.

The podcast covered innovative ways in which CDI has expanded its influence and scope of reviews. With had experts such as Dr. James Fee of Enjoin discussing CDI programs’ role in addressing population health , Dr. Chris Petrilli of NYU Langone discussing leveraging EPIC for provider engagement , and Autumn Reiter of TrustHCS discussing CDI in the ED. I hope listeners found some innovative new ways to keep their CDI efforts growing.

This year I was proud to host our first show on diversity in CDI. If you haven’t listened to this October 7 episode with guest Angelica Naylor of TrustHCS, I recommend rectifying that immediately. Naylor has risen to great heights in her own CDI career and enlightened me with her insights into what it means to be a person of color in the healthcare profession.

I thought I’d also share a few numbers you might find interesting about our podcast community of listeners.

We average about 720 “live” listeners per show. Some 6,700 people have registered for the program, either through the website (wait—you haven’t signed up yet? It’s free, register here), or by subscribing through their unique devices. It’s a popular and growing program.

Our final two programs— that you’ll hopefully find educational, and possibly inspirational will be Viral sepsis and COVID-19, next Wednesday, December 16, with Dr. Erica Remer of Erica Remer, MD, Inc., then an end of year wrap-up episode on December 23.

I will close with a question, and one I always ask at the end of every episode: What would you like to see from the ACDIS Podcast in 2021? What guests, topics, format changes? What are you struggling with in your day-to-day work life that we can help you with? Reach out to me at bmurphy@acdis.org. I love hearing from ACDIS members and our community of podcast listeners.

If you are interested in building your brand by joining the podcast as a sponsor, please reach out to my colleague Carrie Dry: cdry@hcpro.com. She’d love to hear from you.

If 2020 showed us anything, it reinforced the value of connection, even when we’re apart. I look forward to more time together on the airwaves.

Editor’s note: Murphy is the director for ACDIS. Contact him at bmurphy@acdis.org.