Note from the Associated Editorial Director: Five ways to celebrate CDI Week!

CDI Strategies - Volume 12, Issue 40

By Melissa Varnavas

What? September already? Where did the summer go?

But here we are with CDI Week starting this coming Sunday.

Yes, Sunday. This Sunday. That’s when we’ll release the results of the 2018 CDI Week Industry Survey via email and on the ACDIS website.

And ACDIS has more in store throughout the week.

On Monday, we’ll host a free webinar in collaboration with our partners from 3M (read more about this elsewhere in this edition of CDI Strategies) and we’ll begin our daily Q&A series with interviews from our CDI Week Committee and industry experts on emerging topics such as physician engagement, quality, staffing, and technology.

We’ll be hosting trivia and giveaways on our Facebook page, posting CDI-topic focused content on the ACDIS Blog, and even doing a little celebrating ourselves in the ACDIS offices. So many of you have your celebratory plans already prepped and ready to go. If so, please shoot us an email or fill out the online form to let us know what you have scheduled—and don’t forget to send us your team photos to share with the rest of the ACDIS community.

If you don’t have a schedule solidified yet, visit the CDI Week pages of the website and take a look at the ideas posted by our own ACDIS Editor Linnea Archibald and the CDI Week Committee. Here’s a list of my top five:

  1. Download the CDI Week poster and hang it in the physician lounges, lunch room, and near your teams’ workspace. It’s a quick, easy, fun way to engage the rest of your hospital community in the CDI department’s process. Imagine hearing folks pass the poster asking What the heck is CDI? And having a staff member nearby to be actually answer and explain the vital role you play.
  2. Use the CDI Week logo on thank you cards to related department staff. A personalized “thank you” blitz from CDI staff to their physicians or coding staff goes a long way. (It goes even further if you accompany it with candy.)
  3. Host a pot-luck lunch for the CDI team and have everyone bring in their special creations. You could even hold a bake-off and have the physicians vote for their favorite items.
  4. Gather the CDI and coding staff together for a big team photo to reinforce the collaborative nature of the CDI endeavor. You could invite other departments to join in too especially if your program is in the process of starting a new initiative which requires interdepartmental support such as expanding reviews for severity of illness or creating system-wide clinical indicators for difficult documentation issues.
  5. Get crafty by hitting the art supply store and taking a couple of hours with the team to create some CDI Week mosaics of your own. If you do this activity at the start of the week you can showcase them alongside the CDI Week poster and let staff take them home at the week end.

There’s plenty of other ideas on the CDI Week pages, too. One facility is planning an off-site volunteer give-back with Habitat for Humanity. Another is purchasing CDI Week shirts for the team. Some have held Jeopardy matches. Others, CDI-themed Wheel of Fortune games.

However, you choose to celebrate next week, we know that the ACDIS community truly embodies this year’s theme “CDI Mosaic: Creating a Collaborative Portrait.” Each of you gives back to your hospital community in the role you play every day and to your ACDIS community in the generosity you share with your us and your fellow members.

This is your week to celebrate the work you do and to spread the word about the value inherent in that effort. Enjoy it!

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

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ACDIS Guidance, Education