The healthcare industry has evolved over the past year with ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation, new controversial clinical definitions, expansion beyond the traditional acute care hospital scope, and further developments in quality and performance-based initiatives. The success of CDI in this rapidly changing landscape requires CDI professionals to work across disciplines, “in concert” with other departments, and across the continuum of care to achieve the best outcomes with their documentation reviews.
It’s hard to think about healthcare without thinking about change. This year alone, the healthcare industry has seen a number of transitions and improvements, such as the long-awaited shift to ICD-10-CM/PCS, employing electronic health records, and boosting
These days it seems the healthcare industry is all about quality. And no wonder: Underpinning healthcare reform is a fundamental shift from volume-based payment to paying for quality, patient centered outcomes, and demonstrable improvements in physician and hospital performance. Following is a recap of the survey results beginning on p. 7 and LeBlanc’s commentary.
The compliance date of ICD-10 is looming larger and larger. So how prepared are the nation’s CDI specialists for this impending change? Most are well underway with training, but the results still concern Clinical Documentation Improvement Week survey advisor Walter Houlihan, MBA, RHIA, CCS, director of health information management and clinical documentation at Baystate Health in Springfield, Mass.
With a theme of “Physicians and CDI: Joining Forces in Clinical Documentation Excellence,” CDI Week 2012 underscores the critical importance of the partnership of CDI and physician staff. So how is that relationship working on a national basis, as reflected in this year’s CDI Week Industry Overview Survey?
CDI specialists are in general optimistic about the growth of the profession, but not necessarily within their own departments; aren’t involved all that much in RAC defense; use CMI as their primary metric for success; and have found electronic queries beneficial, even though their hospitals are slow to adopt the new technology. Following is an overview of the survey results and Kennedy’s commentary.
