I have been watching discussion on CDI-Talk about Case Mix Index (CMI) as well as an article in CDI Strategies, April 16, 2015. It reminded me that organizations' finance departments need to look at more than just CMI when predicting the future revenue. [...]

A recent Q&A featured in 'CDI Strategies' April 16, 2015, caught my eye as it was about the appropriateness of putting certain information in a query. They talked about the rationale behind including mentions of Severity of Illness (SOI) and Risk of [...]

After flying, layover, college graduation, family time, more flying, running through the airport to make a connection and finally getting on the flight to San Antonio for the annual ACDIS conference, I began to wonder what it is about my drive and thirst [...]

The talk of Outpatient CDI has been going on since the fall of 2014 as we began to understand more about the impact of ICD-10 on the outpatient environment. Although the CPT codes will not be changing, the need to capture the correct ICD-10 code for the [...]

As I read this blog about “when to query”, it reminded me that there is no time like now when it comes to accurate, complete and compliant queries. With the evolving Electronic Health Record (EHR) it has become more important to query as soon as possible [...]

The term 'Clinical Documentation Improvement' has been around for many years and described the early work of the reasoning behind the program's start. The early implementation of CDI programs were sold to CFOs (Chief Financial Officers) as a way to [...]

We are half-way there!  The House overwhelmingly passed legislation to repeal Medicare's sustainable growth rate (SGR) payment formula – without any mention of ICD-10. So the bill does nothing to change the current implementation date of 10/1/15. The vote [...]

Even in the dozen years or so that I’ve been working, electronic communication has changed so much. We are all on the go, and it’s common that a lot of email is done from phones & tablets; maybe even more so than laptops. With this comes a tendency to [...]

I was reading an article today about healthcare reform and the affordable care act, which linked an increase in CDI staff with the increased use of electronic health records. I began to reflect on the past 10+ years in the Clinical Documentation [...]

Electronic health records continue to be instituted within hospitals in order to more efficiently capture the documentation of the patient story. In a recent article “Clinical Documentation in the 21st Century” we hear the position of the ACP (American [...]