ACDIS is assisted in its mission by a number of volunteer boards and committees. Calls for incoming volunteers take place in January and June as follows:
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
Jennifer Eaton, RN, MSN, CCDS
Executive Director of CDI
Enjoin
Knoxville, Tennessee jennifer.eaton@enjoincdi.com
Eaton joined the CDI world in 2007 and had the honor of achieving her CCDS certification shortly after.
Over the past 13 years, her love and passion for this profession has grown and evolved as the purpose and focus of CDI has grown and evolved. In fact, that is one of her favorite aspects of CDI: it is ever changing and evolving.
Given the complexity and diversity of today’s CDI landscape, Eaton believes the industry needs thought leadership of equal measure. Since her immersion into CDI, she has served in a multitude of roles including CDI auditor, educator, and leader both in healthcare systems and most recently as a consultant with a physician owned/directed company.
Given her variety of roles and expertise in both the inpatient, outpatient, hospital, and vendor space, she possesses a varied and robust wheelhouse of relevant industry knowledge. It would be an honor to utilize her professional experience and knowledge base to promote understanding of the mission and vision of CDI as well as offer guidance and direction for the profession as it strives to serve patients, employers, and communities.
Elected to the board in 2020; serving through April 2023
Emily Emmons, MSN, RN, CCDS
Regional Director of CDI
Kaiser Permanente Northern California Region
Oakland, California Emily.L.Emmons@kp.org
Emmons is the California ACDIS Board of Directors President and Chairperson. She previously served as co-chair of California ACDIS for six years from 2012-2018 and was a member of the National ACDIS Local Chapter Advisory Board from 2016-2018. She has worked in the CDI industry since 2011 and is the regional director of CDI at Kaiser Permanete NCAL. She is responsible for CDI operations in 21 Northern California Kaiser Permanente acute care medical centers. She is a registered nurse and Certified Clinical Documentation Specialist. She has her MSN in nursing education and enjoys volunteering to develop and facilitate education and professional networking opportunities for her colleagues in CDI. She is a member of both ACDIS and AHIMA and is committed to furthering the CDI profession.
Elected to the board in 2020; serving through April 2023
Susan Fantin, MSA, BSN, RN, CCDS, CDIP
Corporate Director of Clinical Documentation
McLaren Health Care
Grand Blanc, Michigan Susan.Fantin@mclaren.org
Fantin currently serves as the corporate director of CDI for McLaren Health Care, leading system-wide CDI projects in clinical validation, standardization, dashboard metric/outcomes, policy/procedure, orientation, quality monitoring, and physician engagement/ education. A nurse with more than 28 years’ experience, Fantin has experience in a variety of clinical areas, including acute care nursing, case management/utilization review, patient throughput and clinical house supervision. Her CDI experience spans over 13 years and includes leading clinical documentation programs in academic, rural and multi-hospital system environments. Susan is a CDI subject matter expert and has extensive experience in quality initiatives involving patient safety indictors, hospital acquired conditions, and mortality reviews as well as data analysis, auditing and reporting. As senior CDI director at The Advisory Board Company, Susan consulted with medical centers providing physician education, CDI training and developed a library of best practice materials for ICD-10 physician specialty education.
Fantin received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Madonna University (1991) and Master of Science in Healthcare Administration from Central Michigan University (2007). An ACDIS member since 2008, Susan obtained her CCDS certification in 2011 and AHIMA CDIP certification in 2012. Susan currently chairs the Michigan ACDIS Chapter and is actively engaged in presentations at local, state and national levels.
Elected to the board in 2020; serving through April 2023
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@vidanthealth.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
Aimee Val Balen, RN, BSN, CCDS Lead Clinical Documentation Specialist
Lifespan Corporate Services
Providence, Rhode Island AVANBALEN@Lifespan.org
Van Balen is a lead clinical documentation specialist at Lifespan Corporate Services in Providence, Rhode Island. She has clinical experience in medical, surgical, and cardiac care. She has almost eleven years of experience in CDI and received her CCDS certification in 2011. Van Balen serves as a mentor for her peers both within her department at Lifespan and the Massachusetts ACDIS group. She reviews both concurrent and retrospective charts for documentation best practice, query opportunities, Mortality/LOS risk adjustment, HACS/PSIs, as well as quality measures. Of upmost importance, she also provides ongoing physician education in both formal and informal settings. Van Balen orients new staff and is passionate about CDI education at the CDI level as well as for providers.
Van Balen served as co-chair of the Massachusetts Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists from April 2013-April 2017 and is an active member of the Chapter Leader Advisory Board since its formation in 2017. She has been instrumental in the success of the Massachusetts ACDIS chapter and a resource for chapter leaders nationwide. Aimee has joined ACDIS Radio twice to promote local chapter involvement and was a speaker at the ACIDS National Conference in 2017 and 2018. In addition, she was a finalist for the 2019 ACDIS Advisory Board and recently was published with her colleague in the Journal of Interprofessional Workforce Research and Development titled “Mission at Work: Perfecting Provider Education” (Volume 1 Issue 2, 2018.)
Elected to board in 2020; serving through April 2023
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.
Task: Maintaining and updating scholarship criteria and application processes, selecting scholarship recipients from a pool of applicants, and promoting continued CDI education among the ACDIS and broader CDI communities. Click here to download the committee's scope of work.
Committee Members: Jo Brautigam, Judy Cassetty, Deb Dallos, Teresa Downie, Julian Everett, Erin Head, Linda Jackson, Molly Siebert, Elisa Sninchak, 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.
ACDIS Regulatory Committee
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: Haaris Ali, Valerie Bica, Candace Blankenship (committee chair), Donald Butler, Lori Drodge, Andrea Eastwood, Faisal Hussain, Jeannie Kelly, James Kennedy, Teresa Krepps, Cesar Limjoco, Angelica Naylor, Joan Oliver, and Howard Rodenberg.
Sheri Blanchard, RN, MSN, FNP-BC, CCDS, CCS
Tracy Boldt, RN, BSN, CCDS, CDIP
Jennifer Eaton, RN, MSN, CCDS
Emily Emmons, MSN, RN, CCDS
Susan Fantin, MSA, BSN, RN, CCDS, CDIP
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
Aimee Val Balen, RN, BSN, CCDS
Irina Zusman, RHIA, CCS, CCDS