Task: Providing leadership, expertise, and an industry voice for the ACDIS membership. Click here to download the committee scope of work. To vote in the 2019 ACDIS Advisory Board elections, click here. Please note that you must be an ACDIS member to vote.
Sheri Blanchard, RN, MSN, FNP-BC, CCDS, CCS
Corporate director of CDI
Orlando Health
Orlando, Florida sheri.1986blanchard@gmail.com
Blanchard has more than 24 years of nursing experience, and 12 years of CDI, care management, and coding experience, with a focus on improving patient care, quality outcomes, and the financial stability of hospital systems nationwide.
Blanchard is a subject matter expert on assessing hospitals for areas of opportunities and implementing change through collaboration and DRG bill-hold reviews. She has developed reports to track mortality review opportunities, Emergency Care Research Institute measures, patient safety indicator (PSI) and hospital acquired condition reviews, individual CDI metric reports, implementing CDI in the ED with care management, and denial intervention for DRG validations. She works in collaboration with her CDI team, key departments, and providers to develop diagnosis definitions to align with evidence-based practice. Blanchard is a past co-leader for the Central Ohio ACDIS.
Elected to the board in 2019; serving through April 2022
Boldt was drawn to the CDI professional because it fit perfectly with her passion for ensuring the best patient care, showing great outcomes, accurately portraying the patient’s clinical picture, and educating physicians that all of this is possible through improved documentation. Boldt had the opportunity to start a CDI program while working as a CDI specialist. From there, she became an ICD-10 educator for a large multi-specialty hospital, and then began nationwide CDI consulting and education for several years. Currently, she works as a system manager for a large multi-specialty healthcare system.
During her 11-year career in the CDI field, she has participated on many local and national ACDIS committees and co-chaired the Minnesota ACDIS local chapter from 2012-2015. Boldt has spoken at the ACDIS national conference, the ACDIS Symposium: Outpatient CDI, local AHIMA conferences, on Talk Ten Tuesday, and ACDIS Radio. She implemented a new outpatient CDI program at her current healthcare system, co-authored The Outpatient CDI Specialist’s Completed Training Guide and volunteered on the CCDS-O committee. She has been in the nursing field for 15 years.
Elected to the board in 2019; serving through April 2022
Curry is a registered nurse with 20 years of experience and a clinical background that includes cardiac care and nursing education. Moving to CDI program management in 2013, Curry found her passion as well as her professional community with ACDIS. Her next step was to become a CDI director not long after. In her current role, Curry assists clients in meeting their desired outcomes. She works closely with coding, quality, administration, and physicians to improve the accuracy of documentation, understand coding regulations, and denials trends.
She is actively involved in ACDIS events at both the national and state level and enjoys contributing to industry publications, speaking on CDI topics, and collaborating with other professional organizations.
Elected to the board in 2017; serving through April 2020
Katy Good, RN, RBS, CCS, CCDS
Training Materials Specialist
Enjoin CDI
Gallup, New Mexico katy.good@enjoincdi.com
Good is a registered nurse with a clinical background in the ICU and ED. As the lead training materials specialist, she is responsible for the overall development and oversight of both internal and client training materials focusing on documentation improvement across the continuum of care. She works side by side with Enjoin’s physician team to develop clinical, coding, and documentation materials based on the principals of high quality documentation, evidence based medicine and the most up to date clinical best practice guidelines, coupled with clinical coding concepts that are impactful to patient care and value-based outcomes in all settings.
In 2011, Good was tasked with expanding and systemizing a CDI program across facilities. Over the following six years, she gained extensive management and operational experience ultimately designing an operational model of success which improved the accuracy of both payment and quality outcomes while mitigating risk associated with denials. As the CDI program coordinator, she provided comprehensive education to CDI, coding, and medical staff, thorough audits of both CDI and coding, and developed processes to provide mortality, PSI, and HAC reviews.
Good has been a frequent ACDIS conference speaker and is a regular contributor to industry publications and CDI blogs. Her achievements include recipient of the 2-14 ACDIS CDI Professional Achievement Award and the Academic Achievement Award for graduating first in her nursing class in 2006. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from New Mexico State University and is currently enrolled in the Master’s Program in Healthcare Administration from the University of New Mexico.
Elected to the board in 2017; serving through April 2020
Fran Jurcak, MSN, RN, CCDS
Vice President of Clinical Innovation
Iodine Software
Austin, Texas fran@iodinesoftware.com
Jurcak has been a nursing professional for more than 30 years with 12 years in the CDI profession. She currently uses her clinical knowledge and expertise to create and implement healthcare technology that supports documentation integrity. An active member of ACDIS for the past 11 years, Jurcak is past ACDIS Advisory Board member, having served from 2011-2014. She is also serving on the CCDS certification committee as well as the newly created outpatient CCDS (CCDS-O) certification committee; she is also the author of the CCDS Exam Study Guide. In 2017 Jurcak earned the ACDIS Professional Achievement Award and has spoken at multiple ACDIS national and chapter conferences and the national AHIMA conference. Jurcak is passionate about the CDI profession and works daily with CDI professionals throughout the country.
Elected to board in 2018; serving through April 2021
Vaughn Matacale, MD, CCDS
Director, clinical documentation advisor program
Vidant Health
Greenville, North Carolina Vaughn.matacale@videnthealth.com
Matacale is a physician specializing in hospital medicine who began training and working in the physician advisor role in 2007. In 2013, he took a full-time role as a physician advisor with a mission to develop the advisor role and grow a physician advisor team for the Vidant Health system, which covers most of eastern North Carolina. Serving as the director of the advisor team, he has helped it grow to four physicians and a physician assistant who conduct post-discharge pre-bill reviews and provide support and education for coding, CDI, and medical staff throughout the health system.
Through proactive involvement and collaboration with CDI and coding, Matacale has established regular representation and collaboration with the quality, informatics and IT, evaluation and management auditing, audit and compliance, utilization review (UR), and appeals departments, and the Vidant accountable care organization. He currently serves as the chair of the PSI committee and is a member of the hospital patient safety and quality improvement committee. Matacale also has more than 13 years of experience in UR reviews and continues to practice hospital medicine. He has had the privilege of speaking at five ACDIS conferences, as well as other national and regional conferences.
Elected to the board in 2019; serving through April 2022
Mogbo has a passion for quality patient care and all things CDI, including its overall impact on patient care/safety, and physician and hospital profiles. She has successfully managed various teams, including clinical documentation specialists and coding auditors. She worked as a CDI training director for a California-based health system and currently works as a CDI manager for Tenet Healthcare. She actively participates in the CDIP and RHIA exam item writing with AHIMA. She has been involved in the successful development of in-house curriculum for training clinical documentation specialists and serves as co-chair of the AHIMA CDI practice council working on many projects that provide guidance to the industry—the most recent being updating the Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice, a joint publication between ACDIS and AHIMA..
She co-authored an AHIMA practice brief on “Physician Engagement in CDI,” featured in the July 2017 Journal of AHIMA and also co-authored the AHIMA practice brief on “Physician Office Query” in July 2018. Mogbo was a speaker at the 89th AHIMA Convention, a moderator at the 2018 AHIMA CDI Summit and presented on AHIMA webinars in 2018 and 2019.
Elected to the board in 2019; serving through April 2022
Jeff Morris, RN, BSN, CCDS
Supervisor, Clinical Documentation Improvement
University of South AL Health System
Mobile, Alabama jwmorris@health.southalabama.edu
Morris is the supervisor of CDI at the University of South Alabama Health System in Mobile. He has more than 20 years of nursing experience in adult critical care, medical-surgical/telemetry, and emergency department. Currently, he leads the CDI program at USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital and USA Medical Center where he was the originally hired as its first CDI professional An active member of ACDIS, Morris is a co-leader for the Alabama ACDIS chapter, presented at the 2017 ACDIS Conference in Las Vegas, served on the 2018 ACDIS Conference Committee, contributed to the 2017 book Pediatric CDI: Building Blocks for Success, and is scheduled to present ACDIS 2018 in San Antonio. He is also a member of AHIMA and has presented at local and regional events.
Elected to board in 2018; serving through April 2021
Prescott is the Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) Education Director with HCPro, a division of BLR. Prescott serves as a full-time instructor for the CDI Boot Camps as well as a subject matter expert for the Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement (ACDIS). Prescott is a frequent speaker on HCPro/ACDIS webinars and is the author of the CDI Complete Training Guide.
Prescott started her nursing career in 1985 as a graduate of the University of Vermont School Of Nursing. Since that time she has worked at a variety of organizations including academic, large and small community hospitals. She has worked in a number of nursing roles including as manager in the areas of medical/surgical, ICU, PACU and endoscopy. Her experience also includes specialization as a compliance officer.
She completed her MSN with a focus in nursing education at the University of Phoenix and taught nursing as an adjunct instructor to ADN students. She continued her focus of nursing education in various roles. In 2007, Prescott left this role to develop and implement a CDI program and remained in this role until joining HCPro in August of 2013.
Serving on the board since January 2017
Erica E. Remer, MD, FACEP, CCDS President and Founder
Erica Remer, MD, Inc.
Cleveland, Ohio eremer@icd10md.com
An emergency physician for 25 years with expertise in documentation and the professional side of billing, Remer became the CDI physician advisor for University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland in 2012. Tasked with training 2,700 providers in ICD-10, she additionally closed hundreds of CDI queries and appealed numerous DRG clinical validation and medical necessity denials. After transitioning to independent consulting in July 2016, she authored multiple articles on CDI topics, serves as course director of a medical documentation through Case Western Reserve University, co-hosts Talk Ten Tuesdays, and has been a featured guest on ACDIS Radio. Remer has provided deep dives into clinical topics in presentations on the national, regional, and local level. She serves as the American College of Physician Advisors CDI education subcommittee chair and on its board of directors.
Elected to board in 2018; serving through April 2021
Susan Schmitz, JD, RN, CCS, CCDS, CDIP Regional Director of Clinical Documentation Improvement
SCAL Kaiser Permanente
Pasadena, California susanschmitz59@yahoo.com
Schmitz’s experience includes 36 years as a Registered Nurse and 19 years in the CDI field – from consulting, to managing hospital-based CDI programs, to serving as regional CDI director over 14 SCAL Kaiser Permanente medical centers. She is one of the authors of the CDI Reference app published by Elsevier and is considered one of their subject matter experts for their online CDI course. Additionally, she has been an ACDIS member since 2009, taking the second CCDS exam ever offered.
Elected to the board in 2017; serving through April 2020
Deanne Wilk, BSN, RN, CCDS, CCS
Manager of CDI
Penn State Health
Hershey, Pennsylvania dwilk@hmc.psu.edu
Wilk’s experience spans 35 years in the healthcare field. Her primary nursing background includes Telemetry and Home Health nursing, transitioning into an education role and then CDI. From her original CDI role, she transitioned into consulting and management. Over the years, she has worked on numerous educational projects, articles, contributed as a subject matter expert to CDI and coding coursework, and spoken at numerous national and local conferences. Since 2015, she has been the co-host and founder of the Central Pennsylvania ACDIS chapter.
Elected to the board in 2017; serving through April 2020
Irina Zusman, RHIA, CCS, CCDS
Director of HIM Coding and CDI Initiatives
NYU Langone Health
New York City izusman@gmail.com
Zusman has more than 25 years of HIM experience where she used her blend of clinical and CDI skills to advance data analytics and validate the importance of documentation and coding. Zusman designed two new programs at NYU School of Professional Studies—a diploma in coding, developed in collaboration with the senior director of HIMand a CDI diploma program in collaboration with the director of CDI. She has contributed as a subject matter expert on a variety of focus groups regarding coding concepts, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality patient safety indicators and hospital acquired conditions, among other topics. Zusman currently serves on the CCDS certification committee. She has presented at AHIMA and ACDIS national and local conferences and several Vizient (formerly University HealthSystem Consortium) annual CDI pre-conference meetings.
Elected to board in 2018; serving through April 2021
2019 Committee Members: Jennifer A. Boles, Sheila A. Bullock, Wendy Rusch, Ellen Jantzer, Olga Kormuskina, Janine Podany, Chelsea Provot, Jessica Vaughn, Caley Wilson, Anita Worley, and Melissa Varnavas (committee coordinator). To read the committee members' bios, please click here.
Task:Reviewing materials donated to the ACDIS community for publication in the Forms & Tools Library for accuracy, compliance, relevance, and effectiveness. Click here to download the committee scope of work.
Committee Members: Jillian Bisbe, Alison Bowlick, Alicia Gordon, Darla Martin, Ashely Vahey, Jera Van Damme, and Linnea Archibald (committee coordinator).
Task:Serving as liaisons between local chapter leaders and ACDIS national administration by participating on chapter leadership conference calls, promoting best practice, and providing guidance to leaders across the country. Click here to download the committee scope of work.
Board Members:Leola Burke from North Carolina,Deb Dallos from Florida, Lillian Dickey from Washington, James Doster from Georgia, Karen Elmore from Missouri, Lori Ganote from Kentucky, Joan Korn from Wisconsin, Lori LaFaver from Pennsylvania, Angelica Naylor from Missouri, Kristie Perry from Tennessee, Molly Seibert from Oregon, Rani Stoddard from California, Rachel Strom from North Dakota, Aimee Van Balen from Massachusetts, and Melissa Varnavas (committee coordinator).
To read the 2018 committee members' bios click here. To read the 2018 committee members' bios, please click here.
Task: To define and publish best practices for the CDI profession and provide feedback on ACDIS’ offerings to ensure the association delivers premiere materials suited for today’s CDI professional.
Task: Reviewing regulatory policy and coding and clinical updates, commenting to agencies on behalf of ACDIS, and providing summary, interpretation, and analysis to the ACDIS membership.
Committee Members: Valerie Bica, Candace Blankenship, Lori Drodge, Faisal Hussain, Jeannie Kelly, Lisa Kelly, James Kennedy, Cesar Limjoco, Ruth Lutes, Kevin Morrow, Angelica Naylor, Joan Oliver, Howard Rodenberg, and Allen Frady (committee chair).
Sheri Blanchard, RN, MSN, FNP-BC, CCDS, CCS
Tracy Boldt, RN, BSN, CCDS, CDIP
Angie Curry, RN, BSN, CCDS
Fran Jurcak, MSN, RN, CCDS
Vaughn Matacale, MD, CCDS
Chinedum Mogbo, MBBS, MsHIM, RHIA, CDIP, CCDS, CCS
Jeff Morris, RN, BSN, CCDS 
Laurie Prescott, MSN, RN, CCDS, CDIP, CRC 
Erica E. Remer, MD, FACEP, CCDS
Susan Schmitz, JD, RN, CCS, CCDS, CDIP
Deanne Wilk, BSN, RN, CCDS, CCS 
Irina Zusman, RHIA, CCS, CCDS