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ACDIS announces CDI Professional of the Year
The Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists recently announced the 2009 CDI Professional of the Year. After reviewing all the nominations, the 2009 ACDIS Conference Committee selected:
Beth Kennedy, RN, BS, CCS
Assistant Director Documentation Improvement
Montefiore Medical Center
Congratulations Beth! Beth recieved free admission to the upcoming ACDIS conference in Las Vegas and will receive her award at our Networking and Awards Luncheon on Thursday, May 14. She will also be featured in the upcoming issue of CDI Journal.
The 2009 ACDIS Conference Committee also awarded two ACDIS members for Recognition of CDI Professional Achievement. The two winners include:
Lynne Spryszak, RN, CPC-A
Senior Consultant
FTI Healthcare (and formerly of Alexian Brothers Medical Center)
Wendy Clesi, RN
Director, Documentation Excellence Department
Ochsner Health System
Along with Beth, Wendy and Lynne will also be honored at the upcoming ACDIS conference. Congratulations to three very deserving winners.
Finally, please keep those nominations coming for 2010! The voting was extremely close, so if you’d like to re-nominate a candidate for next year, please send me an e-mail.
CDI professionals of the year nominated
Who'll win the big one this year?
yet. Here’s a sneak peek at what healthcare professionals say about their nominees:
- “In the past 18 months I feel that we have had breakthrough in physician acceptance of documentation improvement, both in its importance to the organization and to their own practice.”
- This CDI professional “skillfully extracts ‘real’ medical record entries, poses appropriate queries to small groups of physicians, and ultimately convinces the physicians that further specifying a patient’s diagnosis or better explaining a procedure best explains what has occurred with a patient.”
- This CDI professional “worked with our executive management staff to demonstrate a 5.1% opportunity to increase severity of illness and 32.4% opportunity to increase risk of mortality, and a 4.0% opportunity to increase the case mix index. “
- “We all know improved documentation improves revenue, but now we are able to show hard evidence that documentation improves the length of stay, the severity of illness, the mortality ratings, and overall patient care quality. [This CDI speicalist's] creative thinking has influenced many hospital changes and probably many more to come.”
If you know a CDI specialist in your organization worthy of being named “CDI Professional of the Year” fill out the form and e-mail ACDIS Director Brian Murphy at bmurphy@cdiassociation.com.
CDI Professional of Year nomination forms due April 1–send them in!
Hi everyone, I just wanted to send out a final reminder that nomination forms for our CDI Professional of the Year award are due in next Wednesday, April 1.
What makes a CDI Professional of the Year ? Well, there are no hard-and-fast guidelines. Here’s a few suggestions:
- A manager who helped implement a successful program
- A colleague who works hard at their job and is passionate about what they do
- A persistent CDI specialist who got a difficult physician to finally break down, buy into a program, and document in the record
- A CDI specialist working on their own in a small hospital on a shoestring budget, doing all that he or she can to get their program off the ground (if this matches a description of someone you know, nominate them!)
This is your chance to help a colleague recieve the recognition he or she deserves. We will be handing out our second CDI Professional of Year award at our upcoming conference in Las Vegas on May 14-15. The winner will receive a trophy and free admission. We also plan to hand out two awards for Recognition of CDI Achievement to two other deserving professionals. All three winners will recieve their awards and be recognized at our networking luncheon.
ACDIS members can read the story of last year’s winner, Randi Ferrare, published in CDI Journal.
Submitting a nomination is simple. Just go to to our awards page, fill out the form, and e-mail it to myself at bmurphy@cdiassociation.com.
Finally, you can expect a sneak preview of some current nominees later this week.
Thanks, and best of luck!
Brian
Your name in lights! Where’s your ACDIS award nominations?
- You can stop dreaming there’s still time to get your nominations in!
C’mon ACDIS members, don’t you want to see your name etched on that shiny shard of silicone? There’s only a few weeks left to submit your entry for your favorite clinical documentation improvement specialist. The deadline for nominations is Wednesday, April 1, 5 p.m.
Recognizing greatness: Nominations open for CDI Specialist of the Year
As most of you know, I’m a writer by trade and, some say, talent. I’m constantly telling ACDIS Director Brian Murphy how lucky he is to have me on board as ACDIS’ No. 2 go-to girl. (I think I nearly have him convinced.)
CDI specialists do not need to lean on self-promotional tactics like mine, thanks to the annual ”CDI Professional of the Year” award. Thankfully, there’s a little more glam and sparkle to this contest than there is to my generally unheeded boastings to Brian. For starters, winners get free admission to the annual ACDIS conference. And don’t forget about the nifty trophy, of course.
Perhaps most importantly those chosen from the collection of nominations become the standard bearers for best practices of the CDI profession.
Last year, Randi Ferrare, RN, BSN, a CDI specialist at Morton Plant Mease Healthcare in Clearwater, FL, earned the award for revamping the program and instilling a multidiciplinary approach to documentation improvement.
“[Ferrare is] a very strong leader, and with that, she brings the mentoring piece. We’ve never worked with anybody like her,” said co-worker Kimberly Richert, RN.
In addition, CDI Professional Achievement awards went to Karla Johnson, clinical documentation specialist supervisor at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines and Nancy Taylor Ward, director of case management/documentation improvement at Tampa (FL) General Hospital.
We get so busy actually performing the duties of our respective professional roles that we neglect to see the proverbial forest through the trees. CDI specialists provide an important function in healthcare. This is your opportunity to earn accolades for your accomplishments. Please take a moment to fill out the form and send it to bmurphy@cdiassociation.com. And good luck!
~Melissa