CDI Journal - Volume 5, Issue 1

Training new staff? Consider the following tips

January 1, 2011
CDI Management

Few managers have the luxury of hiring staff with concurrent record review experience. Thus, once you hire new staff, you need to determine how to train them. Even if the new hire is an experienced nurse who understands core measures, “you can’t just throw him or her a problem list and set them...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 61

Q&A: Choosing the most appropriate principal diagnosis

December 28, 2011
Ask ACDIS, Clinical & Coding

Q: A 79-year-old male nursing home patient presents with lethargy, confusion, and fever after failing an outpatient course of Bactrim for a suspected urinary tract infection (UTI). His white blood count is 22,000, segs 85, bands 10, and blood cultures are negative. He has a temperature...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 60

Guest Post: Santa’s not the only one watching to see if you’ve been bad or good

December 22, 2011
ACDIS Guidance, Physician Queries

by Sylvia Hoffman, RN

Singing: He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

Remind you of anyone? No? Here’s a hint. It rhymes with knick-knack but these...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 59

Guest Post: Pediatric reviews: Know the rules before you play the game

December 1, 2011
ACDIS Guidance, CDI Expansion

by Robert S. Gold, MD

Even experienced and consistently accurate acute care hospital coders may not be familiar with pediatric diseases. Age is not a factor for some conditions (e.g., appendicitis). Others are age-specific or have age-specific diagnosis, healing, and treatment...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 59

Assess remote options, software contracts, and work flow processes to save

December 1, 2011
CDI Management

No industry or profession is immune to the budget crunch. Unfortunately, many departments fall ­into a routine, neglect to assess costs, and fail to look for innovative ways to save money. To address the mounting stresses on its budget, Tufts Medical Center in Boston turned to CNG-ONLINE,

...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 58

Guest Post: A peck of PEPPER, Part 3

November 21, 2011
ACDIS Guidance, Quality & Regulatory

by Linda Renee Brown, RN, MA, CCDS, CCS, CDIP

If you’ve started using your PEPPER to help you identify potential issues at your hospital, good for you!  In this final entry, I’m going to suggest you take it a step further—identifying charts that may fail for lack of medical...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 57

Q&A: Incorporating CDI efforts in the outpatient arena

November 17, 2011
Ask ACDIS, CDI Expansion, Outpatient CDI

Q: Do you recommend carving out time for outpatient [documentation] review, or dedicating someone to this role?

A: We actually carve out time for outpatient review. We started with two initiatives in our ED. One was injections/infusions and documentation...Read More »
CDI Blog - Volume 4, Issue 56

Guest Post: A peck of PEPPER, Part 2

November 16, 2011
ACDIS Guidance, Quality & Regulatory

by Linda Renee Brown, RN, MA, CCDS, CCS, CDIP

In my previous entry, I talked about the PEPPER process and how it can be used to help identify potential issues of errors in coding, billing, or medical necessity that are specific to each hospital.  Now I want to review some target...Read More »

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