Note from the Associate Editorial Director: Collect daily data to show CDI program growth
by Melissa Varnavas
There are several resports you can use to justify your CDI program’s return on investment, writes Colleen Garry, RN, BS, in The Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialist’s Handbook. Discussing concrete data and results will also reveal areas of strength as well as areas that need improvement. Garry suggests running the following reports on a daily basis:
- Productivity levels
- Number of completed reviews
- Number of queries sent to physicians
- Physician response rate
- Closeout time for concurrent/retrospective reviews
- Discharge-not-final-billed report retrospective query turnaround time
Identiying measurable criteria and being able to effectively mine your data represents one of the most important aspects of an effective CDI program. As soon as you’ve uttered the mantra “if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done,” follow up with another mantra: “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Be aware, however, that the number of queries you need to submit to physicians may fluctuate—in fact, you may want to see the number of queries on a particular topic decrease as a measure of your CDI program’s success. But that doesn’t mean you’re educational efforts will make the CDI program obsolete.
“As the level of detail, specificity, and clinical interpretation increase, the role of the coding professional and [CDI professional] will change...” writes Gary. “Most physicians are data driven individuals...As you report positive results, other clinicians will want to participate in the program.”
Editor's note: Varnavas is the associate editorial director of ACDIS. Contact her is mvarnavas@acdis.org.