Note from the Associate Editorial Director: Consider CDI time management techniques

by Melissa Varnavas

“E-mail eats the day away.” Sounds like a play on the ‘ole “apple a day” routine, doesn’t it? It’s actually an PR piece touting a new software that sorts and prioritizes your e-mail. Imagine if  automatic e-mail management saved you hours every day. I’ve seen some pretty disorganized e-mail in my day. One co-worker had more than 600 messages in her inbox at one time. She wondered why her e-mail wouldn’t work.

That press release got me thinking about how clinical documentation improvement (CDI) specialists manage to juggle their responsibilities and how they can effectively make the case for CDI to physicians whose time management techniques are already being tested.

Physicians often say their biggest concern about providing high quality documentation in the patient record is the amount of additional time they think it will take, according to Ruthann Russo, PHd, JD, MPH, RHIT, partner in the law firm Russo and Russo, LLP, in Bethleham, PA.

In her handbook Time Management for Clinical Documentation, Russo pools a variety of sources to show how various stakeholders’ demands affect a physician’s time management capabilities. For example, insurance companys frequently assume that a primary care visit takes a physician a mere 16 minutes. When micro-management of that caliber can affect your fiscal well being, imagine the time management stress that must result.

“Supporting your physicians in the time management process can result in better clinical documentation practices,” Russo writes.

Here are some time management tips you can either share with your physicians or keep to use yourself:

• Prioritize
• Plan your day
• Plan for breaks and take them
• Handle each piece of paper (or e-mail) only once
• Make decisions, don’t procrastinate
• Block out specific time to respond to phone calls
• If there’s a task you dread, do it right away and get it out of the way

Physician support for CDI programs suffers when they worry about how additional documentation requirements could encroach on their already limited available time, Russo says. So, be open and honest with physicians. Talk about their time concerns and be realistic about how much time your additional interactions may take. Initial physician training sessions are a perfect time to raise these concerns and share some of your own time management techniques.

Editor's note: Varnavas is the associate editorial director of ACDIS. Contact her at mvarnavas@acdis.org.