All Entries Tagged With: "communication"

Conference Q&A: ‘The Art of Communication in CDI’

Colleen Stukenberg will present at the ACDIS Conference in San Diego.

Editor’s Note: Over the coming days and weeks, we will post a series of Q&As with presenters and participants from the 2012 ACDIS Conference in San Diego. The first in this series features Colleen Stukenberg, MSN, RN, CMSRN, CCDS, whose presentation “The Art of Communication in CDI and Beyond,” will take place on Thursday, May 10, 1:30-2:30 p.m.

Q: What core communication competencies should CDI professionals come to the role with?

A: While there are three main aspects I will address at the conference, I will add that professionalism, honesty, and respect for yourself and others are important traits for those working in the CDI role. These qualities will carry you far in life. If you do not have these in the CDI role, it can be difficult to communicate with others and earn their respect. You are working with other professionals with advanced education and they need to know that you are trustworthy and respectful. (You need to attend the session to hear my top three, though.)

Q: What communication talents can a CDI manager expect to be inherent and what elements can a manager help to instill in CDI team members?

Some characteristics are innate, meaning people are just born with certain talents. When interviewing a new CDI staff person, you only have a limited time to know whether this individual will be the right fit for the role. The person may act nervous in the interview but you should take note to observe how he/she interacts with you. Then have a team interview to see how he/she interacts with the team. You want someone that not only says he/she is a team player but also demonstrates it, as this is a team-player role. The CDI specialist will need to be able to interact clearly, honestly, and positively with various roles including physicians, nurses, and coders. Furthermore, the CDI specialist will need to be able to portray a professional positive attitude in meetings that may include administrative or board meetings.

Q: Can you name two or three common communication missteps that CDI professionals should be aware of?

A: Thinking too narrowly, thinking there is only one right answer, or thinking that the CDI specialist already “knows” the job. Education should never stop. We can learn from the expert and the novice. While we all have various roles, we ultimately are there to help improve patient care by promoting accurate documentation of the patient’s true clinical picture.

Q: What are you looking forward to most about this year’s ACDIS conference?

This is the first time I am speaking at the ACDIS conference and I am very excited. Attending the various sessions, activities, and networking with colleagues and the exhibitors are definitely on my agenda.  I am also looking forward to seeing all of the friends and acquaintances I have met over the past few years through ACDIS.

Diagnose first, admit second

Consider CDI collaboration with case management to target documentation concerns in the emergency department.

Among other tidbits in my background, I’m a recovering case manager.  It’s a hard, often thankless job, and it never ends.  I don’t think I could do it again, and I give lots of credit to those who still work in this field.  Nevertheless, I have had many occasions to interact with case managers in my previous role as a CDI specialist, and now, a CDI consultant.

As a recovering case manager, I often shied away from dealing with the CM department, but I’ve come to realize that not developing collaborative processes can be a huge mistake. When we avoid case management, we avoid the opportunity to build an ally. We both want medical records that reflect the optimum patient acuity, and that will survive RAC and other audits. And this process starts at the hospital’s front door.

Case managers review patients in the emergency department for admission criteria. If they know that chest pain and syncope and abdominal pain are RAC targets, and that documentation of diagnoses instead of symptoms may move the DRG out of the RAC crosshairs, they can communicate this to the physicians. I like to think of it this way: when the physician writes nothing of consequence, the CDI specialist looks for clinical findings and asks for the diagnosis, while the case manager asks for clinical findings and the treatment plan that support the medical necessity for the admission and strengthen the diagnosis that we just got.

It’s a symbiotic relationship.

I’ve had occasion to work with the case management team at a client hospital, and we decided to put our collective heads together to see how we could educate ED physicians not to admit patients who didn’t meet criteria. We chose as our slogan:  “Diagnose first, admit second!”

We created one page flyers to be posted in the ED and distributed to the ED physicians on popular topics such as chest pain and syncope.  In the flyers, we briefly gave suggestions of alternative diagnoses, defined what is needed to meet admission criteria, and encouraged physicians to consult with case management before writing that admit order.

At the same time, I’ve been presenting a weekly series of lectures to the case management department, very similar to what I would use to teach a new CDI specialist, but adding a little twist that ties clinical documentation improvement to case management.  It’s been a big hit.  They are eager to help teach physicians not to write “CHF” or “urosepsis,” and they want to learn more.  I’m going to give them all they can handle, including helping them read their PEPPER and use it to their best advantage.

Never assume that because someone doesn’t understand what you do, that they don’t want to understand what you do.  It’s like working with physicians and nurses; when you show them how your job relates to them and how it benefits everyone, you get more cooperation.  And as we used to say, cooperate and graduate.

Words to clarify by

Use these common phrases as clues for further investigation.

Many novice CDI specialists do not readily identify when a diagnosis needs clarification. The following list is intended to serve a gentle reminder to “dig deeper.” Here is a list of “clue” words to help you identify when a query may be needed for clarification or specificity.

AMS needs clarification as to possible Acute Confusional State, Alzheimer’s Dementia, or Alzheimer’s with Behavioral Disturbance. If with associated Infection, metabolic condition, etc. it could also indicate Encephalopathy.

Urosepsis could be UTI or Sepsis secondary to UTI.

Hypoxemia/Respiratory Insufficiency could indicate a diagnosis of Acute Respiratory Failure or Acute post Operative Respiratory Insufficiency if the indicators are present. (E.g. Use of C-pap or Non re-breather mask, or O2 saturation less than 92%).

Anemia requires specificity of Chronic Anemia, Acute Blood Loss Anemia, Aplastic Anemia, etc.

Renal insufficiency/chronic kidney disease (CKD) requires added specificity for the stage of the CKD, the Creatinine baseline and further specificity as to possible Acute Renal Failure (ARF), and if indicators present (E.g. nephrotoxic medication usage) ARF with Tubular Necrosis.

FTT, Anorexia may indicate Malnutrition. If present, further specify as to whether it is mild, moderate, or severe.

CHF requires specificity of acute or chronic and systolic or diastolic heart failure.

Right/left sided weakness may indicate a diagnosis of hemiplegia or hemiparesis.

Problems with speech post CVA may indicate a diagnosis of Aphasia.

Drug use History requires clarification of use or abuse and if the Drug Use/Abuse is Ongoing.

Abdominal pain requires documentation of an underlying diagnosis. (E.g. Ulcer, Acute Pancreatitis, etc)

Chest pain requires documentation of an underlying diagnosis. (E.g. CAD, Angina, Costochondritis, etc.)

Gangrene-requires further specificity as to “Wet” infectious or “Dry” ischemic Gangrene

Poorly controlled Diabetes needs clarification whether Uncontrolled or Controlled Diabetes Mellitus.

Hypertensive Emergency needs clarification as to Malignant or Accelerated Hypertension.

DVT needs clarification as to Deep Vein Thrombosis or Thrombophelbitis.

I&D needs clarification as to whether this means Irrigation and Drainage, Exisional Debridement or Non Exisional debridement. (If exisional debridement performed then documentation must state if scalpel was used, clear margins obtained, and depth up to and including deepest layer.)

↓↑Na is not a diagnosis. Documentation must be obtained as to possible Hyper/ Hyponatremia.

Reflections on physician leadership and engagement with CDI programs

Over the past several years there have been a number of conversations that touch on physician leadership involvement with CDI. Programs can and do achieve success, but so much more is achieved when there is a proactive and supportive medical voice.

Physician leadership can come from a number of sources and in a variety of forms. Some CDI programs (a few anyway) report directly or indirectly to a physician executive (medical staff functions, chief medical officer [CMO], etc.) and other programs report to the quality department where a physician executive is frequently directly involved. In these circumstances, I hope the physician executive maintains some amount of time dedicated for CDI efforts.

Some organizations are fortunate enough to have physician leadership within the broader organization that is (or have been convinced to be) very supportive to CDI efforts. From what I’ve heard, these frequently include CMOs and chiefs of staff and/or service lines within a given facility. Finally, some physicians, such as a medical director, physician champion, advisor, or liaison, devote a portion of their time to work directly with CDI. (Read more about the expanding roles and responsibilities of CDI physician advisors in the January 2012 edition of the CDI Journal.)

Furthermore, even with supportive medical staff leadership, how that support translates into action varies. Some facilities provide physicians time to offer educational sessions to their CDI and coding teams. Others provide CDI education sessions to entire physician groups by service line.

Most CDI programs earn physician leadership and support through the tireless efforts of the CDI staff and program leaders. Only occasionally have I seen this support present from the very beginning.

Some Perspectives

I’d like to look at the “state of affairs” in regards to physician leadership.  One ACDIS weekly online poll (2008) addressed the simple question of whether respondents had a “physician champion” and if that champion was effective. That poll was rather surprising; only 46% indicated they had a physician champion, and half of the respondents with a physician champion actually rated him/her as ineffective. So, according to that poll, only 23% of programs have an effective physician advisor.

ACDIS repeated the  poll (with slightly different wording) in April 2011 and though the results showed some improvement, they were still discouraging. In 2011, 31% described having a very beneficial physician champion, 22% described their physician champion as “’minimally effective”, 24% felt the position was not affordable, and 16% indicated that their program could not find a good candidate. Even more surprisingly to me, 7% said they simply did not see the need for the roll.

Additional polls from 2008 which echo the theme of limited physician support for CDI programs include:

• “How have physicians reacted to your CDI program and query requests?” where only 40% reported a positive response from physicians
• “Are your physicians catching on to your CDI program? ” 3% yes, 74% yes and no, 23% no
• “Do you have any physicians who refuse to participate in your CDI program?” where 81% indicated anywhere from one to many physicians refuse

Other recent poll responses illustrate different aspects of physician involvement in CDI , but I thought these painted an interesting picture.

Don’t forget the most recent study, published in the January CDI Journal, in which 73% (178 individuals) indicated that their physician advisor spends five hours or less dedicated to CDI efforts, and 54% described their advisor as either moderately effective or ineffective.

Data

I think it is  important to have data to effectively measure any focus area of interest. I believe a couple of key metric data pieces provide insight to the level of success with physician engagement. In any analysis, I would include items such as:

• Physician response rates
• Severity of illness (SOI)/risk of mortality (ROM) data
• Trends in volume of queries and more specifically the focus of queries (Do CDI staff ask the same queries repeatedly?)

I specifically would not include physician agreement rate except in a broader sense in looking for individual outlier physicians, to find those who either agree to whatever the CDI specialist asks or those who never agree with the premise of a CDI specialist’s query.

As always, I’d love to hear what elements other CDI programs use to statistically validate their physicians’ involvement with and support of their CDI programs.

Resources

Quite a bit of material is available between the ACDIS online polls (I have fun with those, obviously), various blog postings, journal articles, and conference presentations that offer useful information regarding physician engagement. Several provide inspiring examples of successes. Various items from other organizations are in the public domain.

If you are interested, shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment here and I can develop a partial list of links.

Wrap -up

I am sure most agree that fostering physician engagement in CDI efforts is one of the key challenges of every CDI program.

I certainly don’t have many great answers to this question, and I’d like to hear more thoughts, experiences, and success stories. I know some great examples would be wonderful Journal articles or blog posts.

I will toss in a final thought. Organizational cultural change typically takes five years. Certainly obtaining physician interest in documentation and coded data represents a significant cultural change.

Sometimes I wonder if just need to practice a little more persistence and a lot more patience.

Thankful for CDI community collaboration

Over this past year, I’ve had the tremendous honor and pleasure to engage in substantive conversations with at

Everyone has something to say, what can you learn by joining the conversation?

least three organizations. This has actually been a humbling experience for me — that ‘someone’ out there felt strongly enough of my knowledge, ability, experience, and/or writings that they sought my ideas on CDI. I know I learned a lot through the process of reflection and discussion that occurred. I feel I gained so much more than I offered.

This ‘jazzed’ feeling I experienced during those conversations is the same that I’ve felt every time I’ve been able to attend a gathering of CDI professionals, every time I’ve had the opportunity to speak and teach about CDI or documentation, every time I’ve had a reflective exchange on CDI Talk, or every time I’ve enjoyed any sort of stimulating conversation.

Seems to me, these opportunities I’ve enjoyed are part of the broad concept of networking and collegial professional relationships. This is one of the strongest characteristics I feel we possess as a nascent profession — collaboration, mutual support, and exchange.

This is an important avenue for us as we advance our professionalism.

I am deeply grateful that I’ve had a variety of such experiences. I hope that many others have had the honor to feel this excited about (and due to) our CDI profession. Equally, I wish for everyone a coming year filled with professional satisfaction and fulfillment.

Successes and flops

What efforts earn a thumbs-up from your facility?

By Heidi Hillstrom MS, MBA, RN, CCDS

After reading Penny Richards’ blog post, “Do you know who I am?” I wanted to expand on relationship building with physicians.

At my facility, we have a formal introduction process with all of our physicians and resident groups. During this time, we meet with new physicians to explain our CDI program. In addition, we regularly attend physician group meetings, staff meetings, physician quarterly meetings, etc.

Beyond that formal presentation, I find it is our informal interactions which have proved to be invaluable to our program.

I perform medical record reviews on the patient care floors, even if it is an electronic record review. This allows me to see and interact with many physicians on a daily basis. I have conversations with them and it’s not necessarily about documentation. Physicians are people too. Discussions do not always have to be about business or patient care or what is or is not in the medical record. Talk about sports, kids, or upcoming events. Build those bridges to enhance professional relationships.

“The difference between an interaction and a relationship is a matter of frequency. It is a product of quality, depth, and time you spend interacting with another person.” (Bradberry, Travis and Jean Graves. Emotional Intelligence. San Diego: Talent Smart, 2009.)

Relationship building has enhanced our CDI program.  We have seen an increase in response rate, physician collaboration, and overall physician support.

By building bridges and relationships, a physician query becomes more than a nagging piece of paper or electronic note and the query’s author becomes more than a nag—he or she becomes a colleague. The achievement of this camaraderie enhances the ability to develop a documentation partnership between physician and CDI professional.

Penny Richards responds:

Thank you, Heidi, for sending in your comments on my original post.

I know I promised to give readers “five-minute speech” prep ideas, but I’m not a CDI and  have little to offer by way of building relationships with the physician team. I can give you plenty of advice about breaking the ice and kicking off a conversation (I’m a talker and as a former newspaper reporter, have a lot of experience getting people to chat back to me).

When it comes to teaching points with the physician team, however, I bow to your expertise.

I hope ACDIS Blog readers will take a page from Heidi’s book and share suggestions and techniques. What have you done to train physicians and the clinical team on better CDI practices? What worked? What didn’t work?

Send me an email (prichards@cdiassociation.com) and I’ll compile your comments. Yes, this is like an extension of the CDI Week Success Stories that many of you sent. It’s important to share successes. It’s also important to share the efforts that aren’t as successful. Maybe we can come up with a couple of Top 10 Lists… Successes and Flops. Sometimes you learn more by what doesn’t work than by what does!

Editor’s Note: Heidi Hillstrom is a CDI specialist at St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, MN, and the co-leader of the Minnesota ACDIS Chapter. Contact her at hhillstrom@slhduluth.com.

Read more in “Celebrate CDI Success.”

Do you know who I am?

Sometimes causual conversations and simple kindness can open doors for CDI collaboration.

Scenario: You find yourself in the company of a physician you haven’t formally met, but for whom you have left queries (or may in the future). You’re in line behind the doc in the cafeteria or riding the elevator together, and you’re aware this is a great opportunity to say “Hello” and introduce yourself. What should you do?

I hope you put your hand out and start a conversation.

You don’t have to turn it into a big teaching moment. In fact, this might be the wrong moment to try that. Chances are the physician in front of you is lost in thought. Instead, make it a pleasant exchange.

“Hello, you’re Dr. Murphy, right? I’m Penny Richards, I work in the CDI department. I’ve sent you a few queries in the past. I just wanted to introduce myself and say ‘Hello’!”

Make eye contact. Smile. Don’t ask for anything business-related. Don’t ask the status of a pending query.

Keep this first face-to-face meeting upbeat and positive.  If the physician transitions to a business conversation, then by all means, follow—but let him or her take the lead.

Pass your few moments together with light conversation. End your time together with something simple, such as “I’m glad I had a chance to meet you. I look forward to talking with you again.”

Remember: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Ask yourself how you’d like to be greeted? With “Do you know who I am?” or with “Hello, you may not know me, I’m Penny Richards and I’m happy to meet you!”

This easy-in-easy-out greeting style is a great way to establish yourself with the clinical team as someone who is non-confrontational and open to having a conversation rather than an argument.

It’s also a great way to set yourself up to roll out your “Five-Minute Speech” at your next encounter. More on that in a future post.

Voices & Perspectives

Open dialogue is the most valuable tool we have to grow the CDI profession.

I see strong evidence that ACDIS is involved with the broad project of defining and expanding effectiveclinical documentation improvement (CDI) practice. For our association to thrive in this endeavor, however, a chorus of voices and perspectives from the CDI community are needed.

In the course of this discussion we must actively maintain a communal understanding of what CDI encompasses. We must continuously ask each other:

• What do CDI specialists do that sets them apart?
• What kinds of activities identify a CDI staff member?
• What knowledge, skills, and abilities do the majority of practicing CDI professionals demonstrate?
• What are the characteristics of strong CDI programs?

To keep our profession (and our professional organization) strong, we need to participate in respectful, professional debate. We need to foster discussions surrounding philosophy, growth, ethics, new projects, and/or fundamental focus areas not just for ACDIS as an organization but for all of us working in the industry. Through this dialogue we will be able to find additional ways to effectively promote the fundamental aspects of CDI, to continue to grow and adapt professionally.

I believe ACDIS offers great resources toward fostering this discussion including:

• The quarterly online publication CDI Journal
• Benchmarking surveys with expert analysis and commentary
• Annual conference
• State networking chapters
• The ACDIS Blog
• CDI Talk

This blog and CDI Talk are two outstanding venues that I feel are particular venues which promote fast, interactive conversations.

I absolutely love reading the ACDIS Blog. I find the posts informative, thought provoking, reflective, introspective, and challenging. I expect (and consistently observe) well written and cogently argued viewpoints. In my opinion, the ACDIS Blog provides:

• Important news items that highlight information, events, activities, or resources that all practicing CDI specialists ought to know and understand
• A venue for the expression of individual thoughts and concerns by those with enough courage to explore and share what they feel to be the heart and soul of a CDI professional’s life
• An arena where we, as CDI professionals, can truly look forward to what the future of CDI might be
• Thought provoking content which challenges us (and allows us to challenge others) to uphold the highest expectations for ethical behavior
• A wonderful group of posts that entertain and delight, which bring a smile and a laugh when we need it the most.

I’ve found inspiration along with practical tips from shared individual experiences on the ACDIS Blog. And I’ve found that the discussions about challenges we all face have provided me with support, encouragement, and new strategies for growth that I have been able to implement in my own program. What’s more, the content on the ACDIS Blog is free, open to any interested professional.

Though the blog is important, the CDI Talk listserv forum which is available to ACDIS members provides a faster method for CDI specialists to reach out, ask a question, and be assured of responses. CDI Talk offers smaller bits and pieces of the more formalized discussions found on the blog, as well as all of the opportunity for individual interactions and questions. It is really is a fun community to belong to.

To me, the growth of our CDI profession and of its professional association, ACDIS, often feels like a process of discovery. Our profession will only continue to improve as long as we listen, reflect, and discuss the viewpoints everyone offers. I encourage everyone to discover their own interesting, exciting or passionate topic and write an original blog post, or start a CDI Talk conversation.

I’d love to see broad participation from everyone in these conversations and explorations. Thank you to the wonderful folks who currently contribute! A vision for CDI that includes professional growth and development needs a great variety and wealth of participation, of voices and perspectives, so please, join the conversation.

Collaboration: Coding and me

A Venn Diagram helps illustrate where overlapping interests lay.

I realize that many of the faithful members of ACDIS are, indeed, coders, but most of us have a nursing background, so I’m going to give my two-cents on the coding/CDI specialist relationships from a nursing perspective and hope that the coders among us will forgive me.

The first thing and the last thing that coders and nurses need to understand is that nobody knows everything.  If you remember a Venn diagram—yes, those big bubbles with the overlap in the middle that you learned in 7^th grade math—and apply it here, we have the coding world, and we have the nursing world, and we have that great big space in the middle where we cross paths. Nevertheless, we also must bear in mind that there is space on the left and right where never the twain shall meet.

Both nurses and coders have studied anatomy and physiology, we all know medical terminology, and we all have some understanding of coding guidelines and principles.  That’s where we meet.

But coders have studied coding, and they typically can code up to 30-40 charts or more per day with staggering precision. The average nurse doesn’t spend the time assigning CPT codes, or E-codes, or worrying about whether the femur fracture is of the head, the shaft, or the condyle part of the bone, the way coders do.

Likewise, the average coder has never been in the room with the hundreds or thousands of patients that the nurse has seen, has not personally observed or helped treat the signs and symptoms associated with the myriad medical conditions people can acquire, and does not have the in-depth knowledge of intricacies of medical management that nurses have.

When I first started as a CDI specialist, it took time for the coders to get used to me and what I could do for them—and to them.  Because my orientation was bare bones and my preceptor was literally in the next state, I had to learn by mistake. And boy, did I make mistakes.

I can’t tell you how long it took me to grasp that hypertension in a patient with chronic renal disease codes out differently than it does for hypertension in the general population. I’m still embarrassed to admit that I nagged a coder to take a vascular ulcer as a CC on a patient with peripheral vascular disease because I didn’t understand how to apply the combination code.

It took persistence and patience but eventually the coders realized that not only was I a fast learner, but that there were some things that I could teach them.  One coder was coding atrial fibrillation (AF) with rapid ventricular response (RVR) as ventricular tachycardia, which not only added CCs to the coding summaries, but drastically altered the dynamic of those charts.  As a former cardiac care unit (CCU) nurse, I knew that AF with RVR is absolutely not “v-tach.”  I argued my case, and even enlisted one of our electrophysiologists to help me explain the situation.

The electrophysiologist was able to verify that AF w/RVR is definitely not v-tach, and further emphasized that if v-tach were to be coded, it would completely change the treatment protocols he would have been expected to perform.  By pressing the issue, I might have lost our facility some CCs, but I think I saved us a lot of heartache in future audits.

I have tremendous respect for the work that coders do.  It pains me to see adversarial relationships between coders and nurses.  Everybody wants to be right, especially if their work is going to be graded negatively if they’re not officially right. But some nurses are just determined to prove that they know more than coders—and vice-versa.

I really miss the days when I could just call a coder for a consult on a complex case while the patient was still in-house, and when the coder could call me to ask my take on a confusing chart they were coding.

It may be difficult for more experienced coders to understand the need for a CDI program when they have been sending back-end queries for years without  help. So those CDI specialists who do have a nursing background may be in a situation where they need to prove their value—not by fighting with coders but by sharing our clinical expertise in a nonjudgmental manner.

We need to remember that everyone’s goal is an accurate, pristine chart, regardless of who gets credit.

I suppose there are some relationships that will always be sticky.  Let’s just make this one stick.

Book Excerpt: Coding and physician languages

This handbook regarding documentation tips comes in packs of 10 so it can be delivered to physicians, CDI staff, or coders.

Clinical documentation for coding purposes continues to be highly important as we work to obtain data for quality measures and payment. Such data rely on accurate coding, which relies on complete and accurate clinical documentation; they are dependent on each other. Indeed, the more specific the documentation, the more specific the ICD-9-CM (and in the future the ICD-10) code(s) will be, and in turn, the more accurate the severity, acuity, and risk of mortality (ROM) data will be.

Clinical coding allows for the reporting of mortality data to the World Health Organization (WHO), the reporting of morbidity data in the United States, and the provision of data to third-party payers so they can reimburse hospitals for care and services provided. Coded information is also the primary source for the administrative management of medical services and a source of epidemiological research and statistical data from inpatient stays.

Editor’s Note: This excerpt was taken from Coding and Physician Language: Strategies for Obtaining Complete Documentation, Second edition, written by Gloryanne Bryant, RHIA, CCS, CCDS.