Note from the Advisory Board: Blurred lines between coding and CDI

By Laurie L. Prescott, RN, MSN, CCDS, CDIP, CRC
One pitfall many CDI professionals face is one I faced myself in my early years. As a young CDI professional, I stressed to everyone, “I am not a coder.”

I still say that to people who ask me very specific questions related to code assignment and guidelines—when it comes to assigning codes, I defer to the experts. That said, when I started in CDI, I made the critical error of thinking that, since I was not a coder, I did not need to learn the ways of coders.

I learned many of the guidelines by osmosis, thanks to a very patient coder friend who answered my questions and guided me by quoting the Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting and offering direction.

Nobody ever told me to actually read the guidelines for myself. Nobody ever taught me how to use the Alphabetic Index and the Tabular List. I was given access to the encoder and told, “This is all you need.”