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By Marlene Goodwin-Esola, MSN, CV-BC, NE-BC for ACDIS CDI Blog When I first entered the CDI field, I received feedback from someone who left this specialty expressing that her reason for leaving was that CDI was “too sad.” Her rationale was that as a CDI specialist, you might be reviewing a chart of a patient…
From For the Record Magazine Innovative work to meet the urgent public health need for streamlined reporting and tracking of COVID-19 vaccinations is presented in the release of the 2022 set published by the American Medical Association (AMA). The annual update to the CPT code set incorporates a series of 15 vaccine-specific codes that are…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog In one of my recent efforts for the ACDIS Blog, I mentioned that there were times when it might be better not to query. I’ve also mentioned that before one sends a query, one needs to take into account the entire context of the patient encounter. I’d like…
ACDIS Journal Excerpt from The ACDIS CDI Blog No matter the level of training and preparation you put into implementing a new technology, you’ll likely still encounter some struggles along the adoption journey. Inevitably, regardless of the project, there will always be a few troublesome providers, according to Vaughn Matacale, MD, CCDS, director of the CDI advisor…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog You would think that actually defining something would make it easier to recognize. That statement assumes, of course, that you can actually define what you’re trying to see. (I’m reminded of Justice Potter Stewart’s quote on obscenity, “I shall not today attempt further to define…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog I know this will come as a shock to my many (two) readers, but I’m not quite as perfect as I make myself out to be. I, too, have character flaws. One is that I ask questions. A lot of questions. I do so in…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog One rarely thinks of CDI as having a moral dimension. But when we do think about it, we consider ourselves doing the “right thing” for patients to have their complexity of illness fully documented within the medical record. If we divorce ourselves from the financial…
By Cynthia Raymond, RN, MSN, CPC, COC, CCDS, ACM-RN for ACDIS CDI Blog CDI specialist’s work can often be tapered down to two categories of work. One category is concurrent stay reviews where CDI makes efforts to ensure that the medical record is accurate and compliant before final coding. The second category of work is…
By Kathryn Fallah and Karla Accorto for ACDIS CDI Blog CDI is a mix of three categories blended into one, according to Dawn Valdez, RN, LNC, CCDS, CDIP, CDI education specialist with ACDIS in Middleton, Massachusetts. These three categories are: Legal Coding/billing Medical/clinical The legal category deals with query writing, ethics/compliance issues, and finances. Coding and billing…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog Many are familiar with the scene from A Few Good Men where Jack Nicholson’s old-school marine tells Tom Cruise’s younger antagonist, “You can’t handle the truth!” My favorite application of that same line comes from Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks’ 2000-Year-Old Man: “You have some kind of thing…