Note from the Associate Editorial Director: Brush up on clinical and coding essentials with the CDI Journal

by Linnea Archibald

Every year, the most well-attended and popular track at the national ACDIS conference is titled simply “Clinical & Coding.” It’s a broad umbrella, but it speaks to the two most central areas of expertise CDI professionals possess. Whether you come to CDI from a clinical profession (e.g., nursing) or an HIM/coding background, you will need to hone your skills in both spheres to be successful in the CDI field long term and make a significant difference in your organization and department.

Over the years, we’ve of course done articles focused on both clinical and coding topics. We’ve just never devoted an entire edition to them because we saw them more as “evergreen” topics that should appear in every edition of the CDI Journal. While that’s still a true statement and we’ll certainly always talk about clinical and coding concerns, focusing in for the entire July/August edition of the Journal gives us the opportunity to concentrate on the topics that are affecting your professional lives most profoundly on a daily basis.

Because you, our members, are the CDI experts and know far more about the clinical and coding nuances needed to do your jobs well, we’ve decided to center this edition on articles submitted by our members and written by our expert CDI Boot Camp Instructors. Instead of longer feature-style articles, you’ll find a higher number of guest columns in this edition covering a variety of topics.

Within this edition’s pages, readers will learn about:

• Principal diagnosis and present on admission status
• Multidisciplinary approach to malnutrition documentation
• Investing in your own professional development for your team’s success
• Organization-specific sepsis definitions
• Social determinants of health (both from a guest columnist and one of our own instructors)
• Account reconciliation
• Myocardial infarction documentation

This edition also includes a recap of our 2022 ACDIS national conference from Director of Programming Rebecca Hendren, an article from Interim Director Laurie Prescott, RN, MSN, CCDS, CCDS-O, CDIP, CRC, about the marriage of clinical and coding in CDI, and our standard Meet a Member feature at the end of the edition.

The ACDIS team hopes you enjoy this latest edition and find some helpful advice to brush up on your clinical and coding know-how. The September/October edition of the CDI Journal will focus on CDI expansion into “non-traditional” settings. If you’d like to contribute, wish to share your CDI journey, or suggest an article idea, please feel free to email us.

Happy reading!

Editor’s note: Archibald is the associate editorial director for ACDIS. Contact her at larchibald@acdis.org.