A Note from the Associate Editorial Director: Physician advisors as part of the CDI team

April 7, 2016
CDI Strategies - Volume 10, Issue 14

It’s been five years since we surveyed the ACDIS members regarding the role physician advisors play in their day-to-day CDI efforts. Back in 2011, more than half of the 300 respondents said their CDI program employed a physician advisor. However, nearly 75% of those indicated their physician advisor worked less than five hours per week on clinical documentation-related matters, and 54% described their advisor as only either moderately effective or ineffective.

But that was then. Right?
 
With your help, we’ll answer that question and more in this year’s updated version of the survey. To participate in the survey click here.
 
“As the pendulum swings to a quality of care payment model you’ll see more emphasis on core measure and quality reporting and potentially more focus on physician advisor roles in CDI,” Trey La Charité, MD, physician advisor for CDI at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, predicted in the 2011 report.
 
Since then, that shift toward quality payment models has come to fruition. Since then, value-based purchasing has come into play. Since then, CDI programs have started looking into their physicians’ evaluation and management coding. Since then, CDI shifted into outpatient efforts. Since then, some facilities have hired CDI teams comprised completely of physicians to perform the record review process.
 
And since then, La Charité, actually helped bring CDI education to physician advisors with the help of James S. Kennedy MD, CCS, CDIP, president of CDIMD Physician Champions in Smyrna, Tennessee, in the form of The Physician Advisor’s Guide to CDI, a nearly 200-page manual,and the ACDIS annual Physician Advisor’s Boot Camp pre-conference event.
 
All this week, we’ve been giving away copies of the book The Physician Advisor’s Guide to CDI on our ACDIS Facebook account (you can still enter to win a copy today and tomorrow!) and all who complete our new physician advisor survey (by the end of the day tomorrow, April 8) will have an opportunity to win a seat to this year’s pre-conference.
 
We know how valuable physician engagement is to CDI. Now is your opportunity to tell us how your programs leverage your physician advisor’s efforts.