It’s a glass half-full kind of result—40% of “ACDIS Radio” listeners (of the October 28, 2015, broadcast) say their CDI program has an established query auditing process in place. But there’s definitely room to add more milk to the glass: Another 29% say they have some query review practices...Read More »
Each facility should have a specific plan in place between CDI and coding for how to handle unspecified diagnoses, says Katy Good, RN, BSN, CCDS, CCS, CDI coordinator at Flagstaff Medical Center in Arizona. Her facility opted to focus primarily on two things when it came to ICD-...Read More »
Q: I have a question about the following query. If the response is B, can you still capture it as withdrawal?
Based on these indicators taken from the medical record, please clarify by documenting on this query form and/or in the progress note the condition...Read More »
As you plan your itinerary, we are interviewing a handful of speakers to give you a feel for the sessions. This week, we spoke with Susan Edamala RN, MSN, CCRN, CDI specialist at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who, along with Karl Kochendorfer, MD, FAAFP, will present “...Read More »
CDI specialists and their coder counterparts may pose hundreds-even thousands-of queries throughout their careers. One thing remains constant; there's always room for improvement. How can CDI staff and coders write more effective queries and essentially get more bang for their buck? A number of...Read More »
To understand how to appropriately assign codes for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and acute kidney injury (AKI), instead of just reporting the codes that correspond with each and every note in the record, coders need to take a closer look at the clinical...Read More »
The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists (ACDIS) released joint physician query instructions in Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice in February 2013.
Q:In my facility, we are supposed to send an e-mail to our physician advisor (PA) and to administration if a query is not answered within a week. However, this policy doesn’t work well because administration does not do anything with that information, and the PA doesn’t...Read More »
