Q: A four-year-old managing lissencephaly, hypotonia, and dysphagia with aspiration of secretions presents with fever and tachypnea. A chest x-ray shows right lower lobe infiltrates. Would it be appropriate to query the provider to confirm a diagnosis of pneumonia?...Read More »
Q: As we plan to update our CDI productivity policy, I wanted to check how others calculate their productivity. Do you include initials (new accounts), subsequent (in-house re-reviews), and Retro (Discharge accounts, mainly to reconcile queries)? Or just initials (new accounts),...Read More »
Q: For those patients who are flagging due to a procedure unrelated to the first, what do you do with those? If the issue is found during the surgery and taken care of, they don’t require a trip back to the operating room, but the patient then needs an NG tube to drain their stomach...Read More »
Q: The word "with” is interpreted to mean "associated with " or “due to" per the Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting. Although "with" can link two diagnoses, it does not represent a cause-and-effect relationship. But we also need to use direct linking with wording such as "...Read More »
Kenzi Brooks, CCS, CRC, CPC, COC, CCDS-O, is an outpatient CDI specialist at WVU Medicine in Morgantown, West Virginia. She has been in CDI since 2019 and started part time before stepping into a full-time role with the department.
ACDIS: What did you do before entering CDI...Read More »
Q: What is the best way to handle a query that has been written inappropriately?
A: If I understand your question correctly, it seems like there might be a situation where it was discovered that some queries were questionably written. By...Read More »
Q: It has been my understanding that coding of restraint status is essential for mortality reviews, but I’ve never heard it explained how this code impacts the chart. Could you explain the impact?
A: This is a great question. Restraint...Read More »
