Note from the Instructor: CDI is a larger responsibility than we give it credit for

By Allen Frady, RN-BSN, CCDS, CCS, CRC

Our lives as CDI specialists revolve around largely repetitive work. Our time is spent on indicators, numbers, data, crunching and parsing opposing viewpoints. It’s safe to say that it isn’t exactly creating a piece of craftsmanship we can sell as a work of art or exhibit in a display case. Others save the world, climb mountains, invent life changing technology, or find a way to peer into our soul and show us something within ourselves we didn’t even know existed. CDI specialists review records and walk a daily tightrope between reporting clinical accuracy and reporting correct resource utilization.

Yet, we must work to ensure that we perform our roles at a previously unachieved level of excellence. Otherwise, we may not be seen as valuable enough to avoid being replaced by some sort of artificial intelligence or an electronic record with automatic pop-up menus. In order to do excellent quality work, we have to find a way to be fulfilled and motivated by the everyday work we do.

This holiday season as we spend time with family and friends, give thanks and contemplate the past and future, spend a few minutes of introspection on your career. Are you really performing at your highest potential? Everyone falls prey to shortcuts, the path of least resistance, towing the line, and just getting the clock punched on a timecard. However, is doing the bare minimum in synch with your internal image of your personal values? If no, then you have some work to do. The CDI industry, like all industries, requires us all to be innovative, question the status quo, and bring about change, or face a demise of our own creation.

No longer should we be placing unfounded queries “because they said so” or “because that is how it has always been done.” No longer should we blindly accept nonsensical coding guidelines because “surely they know more than me.”

We need to be communicating directly with the Cooperating Parties, c-suite staff, payers, and physicians about the many compliance and quality issues that plague the reporting of proper healthcare data. Each one of you should strive to do better on everything from the smallest of activities all the way up to policy-making.

The work we do may not be glamourous, but it is important. The healthcare industry is sick. If healthcare professionals can’t all work together to heal it, then who will? Who needs a mountain to climb when you work in a profession that represents a vital piece of caring for the health of this population?

Before you know it, it will be 2019. If you’ve been feeling downtrodden in your daily work, perhaps you can take this little note from me as fodder for your own New Year’s resolution. But if you do, like any good resolution you’ll need to not just wish for it to happen, you’ll have to make it happen.

Editor’s note: Frady is a CDI education specialist for HCPro in Middleton, Massachusetts. Contact him at AFrady@hcpro.com. For information regarding CDI Boot Camps, click here.