Note from the ACDIS Editor: There’s no denying another amazing CDI Journal edition!
by Jess Fluegel
While CDI and denials management can be tackled separately by organizations, there’s no denying they go together like peas and carrots. According to the 2023 CDI Week Industry Survey, just under 59% of respondents are currently involved in the denials management or appeals process at their organization. What that involvement looks like can vary, from practicing denial mitigation tactics in query writing to conducting denial reviews and writing appeals.
Exploring this spectrum of efforts and what others are doing is extraordinarily beneficial to any CDI program or organization that hopes to better manage the current inevitability of denials. Which is why I highly recommend all ACDIS members crack open the July/August edition of the CDI Journal!
Whether you’re new to the denials landscape, looking to branch out into other types of denials and/or settings, or trying to streamline your organization’s efforts, we have a host of amazing articles to share in this edition. If you’re wanting specific advice on top-denied diagnoses, you’re in luck too—we have articles focused on sepsis, respiratory failure, and myocardial infarction, some of the top denied diagnoses reported in the 2023 CDI Week Industry Survey.
In this edition, readers will find articles about:
- Denials in unconventional settings
- Developing a dynamite denials team
- Addressing acute respiratory failure denials
- Addressing the collective problem of denials
- Sepsis denials on the rise
- Establishing clinical guidelines at your organization
- Accurately capturing “suspected” catheter-associated bloodstream infections
- Lions, tigers, bears, myocardial injury, ACS, and MINOCA, oh MI!
- Denial-proofing your queries
- Denial strategies for medical necessity, clinical validation, and DRG downgrades
- Provide your organization a life jacket when drowning in denials
- One strategy to prevent clinical validation denials
This edition also includes our regular Meet a Member feature to offer advice directly from a CDI professional in the ACDIS community.
The ACDIS team hopes you enjoy this latest edition and find something helpful in its pages. As always, the CDI Journal is a benefit of ACDIS membership. To learn more about joining ACDIS, click here. ACDIS members can earn one CCDS/CCDS-O CEU for reading each edition of the Journal and taking the associated quiz. You can learn more on the full edition download page.
Our next edition’s topic will be on back-to-school basics, covering the main essentials on all things CDI! Contributing to the CDI Journal is a great opportunity for CDI professionals to share insight with the community, plus you can receive 0.5 CEUs per 350 published words (articles tend to be around the 750-1,500-word mark). If you have advice to share, we’d love to receive your submission. The deadline for the September/October edition is August 1, 2024! You can send your submissions to me at jess.fluegel@hcpro.com and Associate Editorial Director Linnea Archibald at linnea.archibald@hcpro.com.
We hope this edition helps you in your efforts to mitigate denials at your organization! Please reach out to me if you have any questions or are interested in writing for our next Journal edition.
Editor’s note: Fluegel is an editor for ACDIS. Contact her at jess.fluegel@hcpro.com.