Conference conversations: Poster presenter talks interdepartmental collaboration

Editor’s note: Jessica Barbeiro, BS, RN, CPC, CCM, CCDS, CDIP, CRC, is a corporate CDI specialist at Norwood Hospital, Norwood, Massachusetts, which is a part of Steward Health Care. Norwood Hospital is part of the Northeast Division of eight hospitals in Massachusetts. Jessica is also a member of the Massachusetts ACDIS Local Chapter leadership team. She will be presenting a poster at the 2018 ACDIS Conference entitled “Collaborate with case management and physicians with the use of daily CDI length of stay.” Make sure to stop by the dedicated poster viewing session on today (Day 2), 10:45-11:30 a.m. and see all the presenters’ posters.

Q: What made you want to submit a poster this year? 

A: Part of ACDIS’ mission statement is to “provide a medium for education and professional growth,” and I wanted to present our CDI dashboard tool to not only show what we, as a system, use to monitor severity of illness (SOI), but also show the collaboration between the case management team and providers. 

Q: How did you decide on a topic?

A: As a company, we worked really hard to develop a tool to best demonstrate CDI SOI/length of stay reports that incorporate both case management and provider needs. This tool is used at physician/case management rounds in the management of the patient admission. We wanted to share that tool, and see what other tools CDI programs are using.

Q: How has CDI's relationship with case management and providers changed since implementing the tool?

A: Since we implemented this tool, case management and providers better understand the CDI role/department and how it plays a role in helping capture the patient’s SOI throughout the inpatient stay. 

Q: What would you recommend to CDI specialists looking to improve their LOS through collaboration or use that data to further collaboration?

A: There are different tools and statistics to measure a CDI program. It’s important to individualize the tool to the needs of their facility. Communication between departments is key to effective collaboration with CDI, case management, and physicians.

This clinical team approach assists the physician in understanding how their documentation affects the patient’s expected length of stay (LOS). By improving the documentation of the patient’s complications and comorbid conditions, and physician and patient may actually be able to extend the amount of inpatient care available and improve overall patient outcomes.

Working with the case management team assists in the understanding of DRG assignments and demonstrates the fact that physician support for CDI efforts aids the overall care of the patient. In this initiative, collaboration can help earn physician support for CDI efforts and eliminate the CDI stigma that documentation improvement only benefits hospital reimbursement, not patient care.

Q: What's one thing you're excited for at the ACDIS 2018 conference?

A: The one thing I’m excited about (of the many) is the opportunity to not only learn from presentations, classes, and other CDI professionals, but bring back new and exciting knowledge to my own CDI department. 

Since this is my first ACDIS conference, I’m taking advantage of participating in one of the pre-conference classes, Mastering Clinical Concepts in CDI.  

There are so many great sessions being offered and I’m hoping to attend at least one session from each category. There’s a huge focus on quality and outpatient CDI especially at our facility, so I hope to bring back some new knowledge on those areas in particular.

I’m also excited that as a Massachusetts chapter co-leader, I’ll be able to network with not only our fellow chapter members, but get to meet other fellow ACDIS state chapter members as well! We will have a table setup, so please stop by to say hello!