Note from the ACDIS Director: Don’t miss your last chance to take critical action—Vote in the ACDIS advisory board election

By Brian Murphy

I recently had someone tell me how much they loved our white paper, “How to conduct a medical record review,” enough to use it as a baseline for a policy in their own organizational policy.

Another person mentioned that they found the position paper “Developing Effective CDI leadership” very helpful and inspiring.

Neither was written without the efforts of the ACDIS advisory board.

The recent 2019 update to the ACDIS/AHIMA “Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice” brief was written with help of an advisory board of volunteers, representing ACDIS and collaborating with volunteers from AHIMA.

Sensing a theme here?

The ACDIS advisory board is a critically important group of volunteers, who do a lot to make ACDIS the great association that it is, and a true home base for CDI professionals.

We have a great staff here at ACDIS national who run our website, write the CDI Journal, manage the certification programs, and more. Out staff contracts hotels and develops our conference agendas. They answer phone calls and emails. We also have an awesome staff of CDI boot camp instructors who teach and maintain our educational classes and e-learning.

But we don’t develop industry guidance and best practice in a vacuum (that’s not only a poor practice, its dangerous). For that, we rely on a multidisciplinary board of seasoned experts working in the field, from all walks of the profession and with a variety of professional backgrounds. They include physicians, registered nurses, and health information management/coding professionals. Just like we ask our elected officials in government to represent “we the people,” you are voting for someone who will represent you, the CDI professional, and the broader profession.

Voting is open to ACDIS members. It’s a simple matter of going to the website here (make sure you’re logged in). Take a few minutes out of your busy day and read the candidates’ backgrounds, and the reasons why they wish to run. Click and cast your vote.

Four new advisory board members are voted in each year, via popular vote of our membership. They replace four members who have served a three-year term.

With that, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the outstanding efforts of outgoing board members:

• Sam Antonios, MD, FACP, SFHM, CPE, CCDS
• Paul Evans, RHIA, CCDS, CCS, CCS-P
• Tamara Hicks, RN, BSN, MHA, CCS, CCDS, ACM
• Robin Jones, RN, BSN, MHA/Ed, CCDS

Behind the scenes on conference calls, on the stage of our conference, and on our live and popular quarterly membership conference calls, these four have had exemplary terms of service and contributed to the resources, networking, and professional growth that ACDIS offers.

Please join me in thanking them, and then get busy voting in our next four professionals. The vote closes end of day today, March 28.

Editor’s note: Murphy is the director of ACDIS. Contact him at bmurphy@acdis.org.