The compliance date of ICD-10 is looming larger and larger. So how prepared are the nation’s CDI specialists for this impending change? Most are well underway with training, but the results still concern Clinical Documentation Improvement Week survey advisor Walter Houlihan, MBA, RHIA, CCS, director of health information management and clinical documentation at Baystate Health in Springfield, Mass.
With a theme of “Physicians and CDI: Joining Forces in Clinical Documentation Excellence,” CDI Week 2012 underscores the critical importance of the partnership of CDI and physician staff. So how is that relationship working on a national basis, as reflected in this year’s CDI Week Industry Overview Survey?
CDI specialists are in general optimistic about the growth of the profession, but not necessarily within their own departments; aren’t involved all that much in RAC defense; use CMI as their primary metric for success; and have found electronic queries beneficial, even though their hospitals are slow to adopt the new technology. Following is an overview of the survey results and Kennedy’s commentary.