Note from the ACDIS Editor: New Journal edition spotlights the global impact of CDI!
by Jess Fluegel
Though CDI originated as the bridge between clinical records and coding, its reach and effect has only multiplied as organizations better understand documentation’s impact on the past, present, and future of healthcare. When ACDIS considered what to focus our CDI Journal editions on this year, there were simply too many topics to choose from. That’s why we included an edition that would help everyone step back and consider: Now that CDI is known in much of the healthcare world, how can it move forward and better impact the various settings, departments, and goals of healthcare?
For this edition of the CDI Journal, we hope to give you some insight into all the ways CDI professionals are already making as well as the new directions you can take to widen both your own impact and that of your department.
In this edition, readers will find articles about:
- How one CDI team made impact outside of traditional workflows
- The role of ancillary documentation in CDI
- Strategies for executive leadership buy-in
- Developing a successful onboarding and orientation process
- How CDI can play a pivotal role in decreasing denials
- How CDI can affect the whole continuum of care
- How generative AI can assist CDI efforts
- Leadership Council research findings on outpatient CDI and risk adjustment
- The different ways CDI transforms healthcare
The ACDIS team hopes you enjoy this latest edition and find something helpful in its pages. As always, the CDI Journal is a benefit of ACDIS membership. To learn more about joining ACDIS, click here. ACDIS members can earn one CCDS/CCDS-O CEU for reading each edition of the Journal and taking the associated quiz. You can learn more on the full edition download page.
Our next edition’s topic will be quality and health equity. If you have experience to share and/or advice to give on expanding into new settings with CDI or another related topic, we’d love to receive your submission. Contributors published in the Journal receive 0.5 CEU per 350 published words (articles tend to be around the 750-1,500-word mark), and the deadline for the November/December edition is October 1, 2025! Click here to submit your article to the Journal.
We hope this edition helps you see that there is no end to the impact CDI efforts can make. Whether for a single patient, whose future care and treatment is affected by a part of their clinical documentation being clarified, or on a global scale, as increased accuracy in clinical records and data shapes the research, strategies, and trajectory of healthcare as a whole—CDI affects both the personal and public future of our health. The more aware everyone within the profession is of that fact, the better we can move forward to make a difference.
Editor’s note: Fluegel is an editor for ACDIS. Contact her at jess.fluegel@hcpro.com.