Note from the ACDIS Editor: Congratulations to our 2023 Scholarship winners!

by Jess Fluegel

There’s nothing quite like celebrating a friend and colleague’s success. Though many of us are separated by state lines, the ACDIS national team loves to share with and celebrate each other over the big wins and the small. It’s one of the most important ways we bond and connect, and I think that is the case for any good community.

For the ACDIS community as a whole, this is something we’ve strived to develop as well. For the past few months, I’ve been working with the ACDIS Furthering Education Committee as they’ve reviewed each and every one of all the wonderful applications we received for the 2022/2023 ACDIS Scholarships. It’s been a long process to select our recipients, but so rewarding as we’ve considered the impact these awards will have on their futures and successes.

Since its launch in fall 2019, the purpose of the ACDIS CDI Scholarship program is to assist CDI professionals in enhancing their careers with further education and to increase collaboration among their colleagues by sharing knowledge. ACDIS has awarded three scholarships annually in the past, but this year expanded to four in honor of our dear departed friend and colleague, Melissa Varnavas:

• Introduction to CDI Scholarship: One award for a one-year ACDIS membership + enrollment in the ACDIS CDI Apprenticeship program
• Professional Development Scholarship: One award of registration to an ACDIS online Boot Camp
• Outpatient CDI Scholarship: One award of a 2023 ACDIS Symposium: Outpatient CDI registration
• Melissa Varnavas Scholarship: One award of a 2023 ACDIS conference registration

The scholarship recipients represent the best and brightest in the CDI industry, providing a glimpse into the promising future of the profession. They hail from different professional backgrounds, organization sizes, geographic locations, and levels of experience. Additionally, they all demonstrate an enthusiasm for learning and sharing the knowledge the scholarships will afford them with their teams and organizations.

Without further ado, we are proud to present the 2023 Scholarship recipients:

Introduction to CDI Scholarship

Glenda Bocskovits, AA, CRC, was recently promoted as a CDI specialist supervisor at InnovaCare Health in Orlando, Florida, after working in CDI for less than two years! Prior to that, she has over 25 years of healthcare experience under her belt, working as a medical transcriptionist and in the coding profession. Because of this background, Bocskovits has gained insight into the needs of providers and their practices, allowing her to better help them achieve their goals.

Her new role at her facility involves the opportunity to supervise and train more CDI specialists, so her enrollment in the CDI Apprenticeship program and the resources she will get with a year-long ACDIS membership will not only benefit her but those she will be training. Congratulations!

Professional Development Scholarship

Gilda Abaya, RN, works as a CDI specialist at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York. After working as a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse for 18 years, Abaya has spent another five in CDI reviewing charts, writing queries, and working with her fellow colleagues and medical teams. She’s found the challenges in this role different from the bedside but loves how being a CDI specialist keeps her updated on the latest in healthcare, learning every time she does a chart review while also improving patient records.

“[Abaya] continually seeks opportunities to learn. She volunteers to test systems and implement upgrades. She is always eager to seek new learning opportunities,” one of her recommenders wrote. “Being an early adapter of change initiatives, Gilda leverages her personal experience and knowledge to influence training and communication efforts.”

As she continues her education and progresses in this role, Abaya will be enrolling in the CCDS Exam Prep Class Online to further her goal of being CCDS-certified. Congratulations!

Outpatient CDI Scholarship

Chelsea Provot, RHIT, works as the lead program manager for coding and documentation education in surgical sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. She has been in the HIM field for nine years, previously working as an outpatient coder and in a managing role, monitoring others and enhancing education on multiple specialties for documentation and revenue. One of her long-term goals is to enhance the outpatient CDI process and engage faculty in new opportunities with quality measures in her current role.

“[Provot’s] work here has been invaluable,” one of her recommenders wrote, “due to her innovation as well as inquisitive and collaborative manner, possessing great skills in education and team building. She further has an advanced ability to outline strategy for improvement, to interpret data, and to implement change with documentation behavior.”

To help her in her goals to network more with the CDI community and improving outpatient documentation, Provot has been award a registration to the 2023 ACDIS Symposium: Outpatient CDI in Chicago, Illinois. Congratulations!

The Melissa Varnavas Scholarship

Marnina Leal, RN, MSN, CCDS, works as a CDI specialist at Premier Health System based in Dayton, Ohio. She has been a CDI professional for the last nine years, and an ACDIS member active in the ACDIS Ohio local chapter for nearly as long. Before that, her time as a nurse paved her interest and passion for the CDI profession, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and lifelong learning to better assist providers and advocate for their patients. In her time as a team leader and CDI manager, Leal headed many impactful projects to shift financial DRG impact, develop tip sheets for providers and standard query templates, assist in guidelines for remote working and productivity tools, and much more.

According to Leal, the ability to make a difference at her organization, whether in revenue, quality, readmissions, length of stay, or denials management, sustains her continued interest and excitement about the CDI profession.

Since becoming a CDI specialist, it has long been Leal’s dream to attend the ACDIS national conference for its in-person education she can share with her peers as well as its many networking opportunities! The scholarship review team was excited to fulfill that dream and award her registration to the 2023 ACDIS national conference in Chicago, Illinois this May 8-11. Congratulations!

Last, I want to thank all those who applied for an ACDIS scholarship this year. We received so many wonderful applications and it was very hard to choose! The Furthering Education Committee encourages everyone who applied to try again for this coming year. If you have any questions about your application or about applying in the future, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at jfluegel@acdis.org!

Click here to read about the scholarship criteria, application, and selection process.

Editor’s note: Fluegel is an editor for ACDIS. Contact her at jfluegel@acdis.org.