Note from the Associate Editorial Director: Leveraging the CDI Salary Survey data for career growth

by Linnea Archibald

As you may have seen, ACDIS published its 2021 CDI Salary Survey last week. From a strictly academic standpoint, the data is interesting, but honestly the report simply wouldn’t be worth the work it requires if we didn’t believe that it can truly help you advance your careers.

We know, however, that when you’re confronted with the mass of data, it can be difficult to digest and apply it to your work. With more than 30 charts and tables of data included in the new report, it can be difficult to parse out what will be helpful for your particular needs. While I’d love it if you’d read the full report, I wanted to offer some advice for those looking to grow their careers in specific ways.

Let’s start with those of you who are looking to make the case for a higher salary. Now, the Salary Survey feels like a natural place for you to start building your case, but you still need to focus your attention on the information specifically beneficial to your skill level and background. When putting together your proposal, start by looking at the average salary ranges that correspond to the following:

• Those with similar job titles to you (pp. 3-4 and corresponding figures)
• Those with similar years of experience, certifications, and educational background (pp. 4-7 and corresponding figures)
• Those who live and work in similar geographical regions to you (p. 11 and corresponding figures)

These ranges will give you a good idea of what salary range you could be looking at. Then, submit your proposal to your leadership with the data to back it up.

If you’re looking to advance by stepping into a leadership or more specialized role (e.g., educator, auditor, etc.), the data most beneficial will be slightly different . Take a look at the data surrounding job title stratification (pp. 3-4 and corresponding figures) and that surrounding the prevalence of promotions (pp. 7-9 and corresponding figures).

The Salary Survey also holds helpful information for those in leadership looking to expand their staffing this year. CDI teams are increasingly asked to do more and show greater results  for their organization, often without additional resources. When building a proposal for additional staff positions, combine information specific to your organization (e.g., number of reviews conducted, current financial and quality outcomes, potential missed opportunities due to short staffing) with benchmarking data surrounding bed count to staffing numbers and organization type and staffing numbers (p. 10 and corresponding figures).

I hope that this year’s Salary Survey report helps you advance your career in 2022, but I also help my advice emboldens you to leverage the other ACDIS data we have available to build your cases for future CDI projects and personal professional development. We don’t want you to read the reports once and move on; we want this information to serve you and benefit your careers and organizations in the long run. That’s why we conduct these surveys, publish reports, and run ACDIS website polls.

Of course, if there’s a specific piece of information or data that would be beneficial to you, we encourage you to reach out and tell us. We’d love to help you gather data or leverage the data we already have available on the site to help you and your programs grow.

Editor’s Note: Archibald is the associate editorial director for ACDIS. Contact her at larchibald@acdis.org.