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Post-conference musings from Recognition award recipient

Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from Kara Masucci, RN, PNP, MSN, CCDS, Morristown (NJ) Memorial Hospital/Atlantic Health. In it she recounts a post-conference experience she had while meandering through Downtown Disney contemplating all the lessons learned during this year’s sessions. She gave me permission to post it here to the blog so you can read it for yourselves. I hope you find it as inspiring as I did.

“I thought I’d forward you this picture. I thought you might get a kick out of it. As I walked around Downtown Disney the last day I was thinking and meditating on all the great things I learned attending this year’s conference. I was energized to return to work,  to get started on some of these ideas, when I came across this statue outside of the Dublin Pub.

“As strange as it may seem, the statue reminded me of the two sides of documentation. I saw it as though it represented both the physician and practitioners as well as the CDI professional. When I looked at the hat on the right and the sad demeanor of the gentlemen, it felt as if he was deflated, as if someone had broken his spirit. Maybe he was a CDI specialist and a physician had just written “blaspheme” all over a query (this has happened to me in the past…true story!). But when I looked at the statue independent of the hat, with the arms crossed and the legs out, I thought of a physician. Angry, upset, perhaps tired, overworked. I remembered the presentation by Alan E. Williamson, MD, FACS, the vascular physician who showed a schedule of an orthopedic doctor who saw 60 patients in a day. I thought about how tired he must feel. I thought how getting one of our queries was probably the last thing he needed in his day.

“So there I was just thinking all these things and wondered to myself so what? What could this possibly mean to me, as a CDI professional and as someone trying to bridge a gap between the two people I had imagined the statue to represent? And then, I saw the bench. The statue wouldn’t be present independent of the bench! It wasn’t just the image of the man that was powerful, it was powerful because of the entire composition. The man needed something to lean on. So, like I tell my physicians all the time, we need to learn to sit together on the bench. At any rate, that was my parting wisdom and I thought you might enjoy it!”

Just so you know, Masucci received the 2011 Recognition of CDI Professional Achievement award at this year’s conference. In nominating her,  Joseph J. Arcuri, Jr., MD, Associate Program Director, Internal Medicine at Morristown Memorial Hospital said:

“As we all know, healthcare providers, and physicians in particular, can be very resistant to cultural change affecting their own practice styles. Despite the many challenges of her position, Kara provides all of these services with a smile and a positive energy that is infectious.”

I can personally vouch for her infectious and heartwarming energy. Congratulations again, Kara!

ACDIS post-conference wrap-up

From Dr. Bensen’s session “Dealing with Difficult Physicians and Thorny Query Situations” to Dr. Williamson’s presentation offering “A Surgeon’s Perspective” on documentation for surgical complications, there was certainly a lot of perception changing information offered throughout this year’s conference. Although I personally did not attend the Track 1 sessions regarding ICD-10, I heard a lot of positive feedback about the programs offered there and in Track 2 regarding New Initiatives and Ideas.

If you attended a session during the conference I hope that you will consider leaving a comment here and sharing one or two items you may have learned. Also, I heard a number of attendees planned to return to their facility and re-present the information they learned to their fellow staff members. What a wonderful way to continue the learning process. I hope that those of you who are not currently involved in a local CDI networking group will consider joining one in your area and bringing your ACDIS experiences back to fellow CDI professionals there as well.

While we’re happy that more than 775 people chose to participate in the 4th Annual Conference we know that not every one of our 2,500 plus members could make it this year, so we’d love for those who did attend to share what they’ve learned with others. As a reminder all the powerpoint presentations are posted on the ACDIS website in the Forms & Tools Library.

ACDIS Day Two: Networking lunch and trivia

What a blast! I cannot believe the tremendous turnout for the the first Networking Lunch on Day 2 of the conference.

We hoped that this less formal lunch would provide local chapters away to get to meet some new faces and for those states/regions without a networking group yet in place, we hoped the lunch would help CDI specialists meet and network.

Almost every seat in the room was filled nearly as quickly as it emptied after the previous educational session. Even as I scrambled to distribute the table cards, participants took their seats and offered to help. (To the lovely women who helped me fold the cards–thanks so much!)

The Florida ACDIS Chapter members quickly fluttered from table to table handing out raffle tickets, crayons, and over-sized tablets of paper while Charrington “Charlie” Morell, RN, CCDS, Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialist, at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point, FL, readied the CDI/ACDIS Trivia presentation she’d created with co-worker Pam Long.

The rules were simple. Charlie posed a question which appeared on the screens. Each table had between 15-20 seconds to come up with an answer before Charlie revealed the correct choice. The table “score keeper” jotted down the number of points they’d won. At the end, the table with the most points won!

The Florida ACDIS Chapter gave out ACDIS key chains and FlACDIS coffee mugs to the winners. ACDIS donated a copy of The CDI Specialist’s Guide to ICD-10 and The CDI Pocket Guide as well as a complimentary attendance to next year’s conference in San Diego to raffle winners! If you won a prize of any sort please let us know by leaving a comment in the section below. We want to recognize your winning in the special section to released later this month.

When the crowd of nearly 400 players got going I swear you could hear the cheers all the way to Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom. I bet even Mickey Mouse was jealous of all the fun CDI specialists were having.

ACDIS Day One

I do not usually - items from Facebook for publication here on the ACDIS Blog but I cannot resist today. There were too many moments and too many education snippets to effectively recount them all so please forgive me as I share again here a few of my favorite moments from today.

1. Seeing how many conference attendees wore purple and orange
2. Seeing Don Butler, Kelley Sears, and Kara Masucci earn the honors they so rightly deserve for all they do for the CDI profession
3. Seeing the look on ACDIS Director Brian Murphy’s face when Tamara Hicks and the ACDIS Advisory Board gave him his very own recognition award
4. The Poster Session. (The Saints and The Jungle… )
5. Dr. William Haik playing “Heart & Soul” on the lobby piano.

Don’t miss out on poster presentation educational opportunity

Earlier today I had the pleasure of meeting the dedicated volunteers who somehow managed to compress the experiences of their CDI programs’ expertise into a three-panel presentation poster board. If you think presenting in front of an audience is difficult, imagine taking all the information that lives solely in your own mind and condensing it into these three panels.

Unlike Harry Potter, this year’s poster presenters are not able to simply touch their wands to their

temples to extract their CDI program memories. (By the way, Lynne Spryszak says “The Harry Potter Experience” is a wait well worth it. Ask her to show you pictures.) Unlike the speakers at our various sessions the poster presentations needed to be able to stand on its own as a testament to the efforts of an individual or program even when its proponent(s) were unavailable.

At every turn I am awed and inspired by the efforts of CDI specialists to illustrate their successes in a true effort to help their peers. I cannot wait to see the rest of the poster presentations as they arrive in the morning.

I encourage you to visit the Crystal Room which will be open throughout the conference. Presenters will be available to discuss their posters tomorrow, Thursday, April 7, 4-5 p.m., and Friday, April 8, 7-8 a.m.

Here are this year’s presentations:

• Fran Jurcak: Ensuring accurate hospital and physician profiles and reimbursement through appropriate documentation
• Juanita Seel: Keeping the momentum going in a mature CDI program
• Abby Steelhammer: CDI and its benefits on quality, safety, and reducing re-admissions and HACs
• Melinda Fleet: ACDIS Texas state chapter poster
• Michelle Johnson: CABG and valve replacement patients: How CDI improved documentation to justify GMLOS
• Jennifer Noel: Implementation of a physician query dashboard, the benefits of data transparency and its impact on physician compliance
• Charrington Morrell & Pam Long: Navigating the Medicare documentation jungle
• Jean Sands, Karen Newhouser: Creating a Safe Path through the Electronic Labyrinth: Real Time ClinDoc GPS for the Comprehensive Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
• Veronica Hussey:An alternative approach to CDIP staffing within the academic medical center setting
• Andrea Burrier and Lisa Shank: The one …the only…APR-DRG system in Maryland: Concurrent review with MD query response rate
• Michelle Madison: Decreasing post-procedural complication rates through improved clinical documentation, coding and provider education
• Virginia Bailey: A cooperative team approach to reducing length of stay
• Bonnie Epps: Education of residents in CDI in an academic medical center
• Janet Gentle: Career ladder: Promoting excellence and opportunity for nurses in CDI and other specialty roles
• Janet Greene: From paper to web: Sharing a multimedia methodology for physician education
• Lori Hickey: Reduction of diagnoses from MCC to CC status: A look at acute renal failure and a forecast of metabolic encephalopathy
• Mel Tully: Clinical integration: Implementing the concept and the role of CDI
• Denyatta Henry, Dawn Beebe, Tamar Swain: Development of a standardized query policy and forms and impact on response rate
• Ina Corley and Donisia Lee: “WHO DAT talking about CDI”: Super Bowl 2009 champion Saints football theme

Peer-to-peer, face-to-face: Making connections at the conference

I’ve already had a great time at the conference, and it is only 10:30 a.m., on Wednesday. Okay, I’m not technically at the “conference.” Today’s feature is the physician advisor pre-conference. So, this morning as people began to register I was able to meet more 50 dedicated CDI professionals excited to learn more about putting the expertise of their physician advisers to good use.

I also had a few of those wonderful “putting faces to names” experiences. As I mentioned on the ACDIS Facebook site, ACDIS Advisory Board member Cheryl Ericson and I were chatting for about ICD-10 implications for CDI specialists for awhile before Cheryl happened to see my name tag and we realized that we knew each other!

One of the best reasons to join ACDIS is for the camaraderie and peer-to-peer assistance it offers. And of the best reasons to come to an ACDIS Conference (in my opinion) is to meet those peers who have helped you, professionally befriended you, all year long.

Later today, as I help out at the pre-registration desk (which is open from 3-6 p.m., and tomorrow at 7 a.m.) and throughout the conference I’ll be able to meet so many more CDI specialists that I have had the pleasure of working with and chatting with over the years. Even better, perhaps, is all the great new people I’ll have the opportunity to meet in the coming days! There will be nearly 800 of us including speakers and vendor participants. I am looking forward to meeting you!

Thanks to the 2011 Conference Committee

We received more than 80 proposals from people interested in presenting at the 2011 ACDIS Conference, which was a tremendous response. Sorting through those proposals and setting the agenda for the Orlando event fell to a special set of volunteers who met several times and spent countless hours poring over suggested agendas and discussing the merits of various ideas.

Later this week, conference attendees will get to participate in sessions along one of three tracks:

1. Data mining and reporting (Day 1); ICD-10 (Day 2)
2. New initiatives and ideas
3. Clinical chart review

Some will hear Joel Moorhead, MD, discuss the differences in interpretation of clinical situations and coding guidelines, while others will choose to learn how to use data to recharge their CDI program from Elizabeth Bonetti, RN, MA, MS. Some will spend time with Margi Brown, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, CPC, CCDS, learning how to handle denials, while others will attempt to tackle thorny query concerns with Pamela Bensen, MD, MS, FACEP. In all, there are more than 20 sessions featuring more than 30 speakers. It is a terrific agenda that we are very proud of.

We are extremely grateful to the 2011 Conference Committee members who put it together.  No doubt you’ll recognize some of their names. Many have worked diligently as leaders of local CDI networking groups or served on other ACDIS committees. If you happen to see them at the show, be sure let them know that you appreciate their efforts. Again, special thanks to the following members:

• Virginia Bailey
• Shelia Bullock
• Christine Cox
• Mary Ann DeSilveria-Davidson
• Bill Freeman
• Kristen Geissler
• Natalie Howell
• Jennifer Love
• Melissa Moog
• Judith Rochelle
• Christi Sarasin
• Dee Schad
• Linnea Thennes

Faces to watch for at this year’s program

I’m sure you all will be watching for sightings of Mickey, Minnie, and the gang while studious listening to speakers as

they discuss the latest strategies for composing physician queries. But those aren’t the faces I wanted to talk to you about.

You see, so much behind-the-scenes work goes into an ACDIS conference. Our beloved Director Brian Murphy doesn’t rest but a day from the time the current year’s program ends before he starts planning the following year’s program. In fact, he is already busy planning the 2012 event. (Don’t miss the big unveiling of the location and dates for 2012 during the Awards Lunch on Thursday, April 7.)

And Brian isn’t the only one hard at work. For example, our conference coordinator, Kathy Wilson, is rushing around the Walt Disney World Hilton at this moment, making sure everything is perfect for when we all arrive. If you see a woman with short blonde hair rushing around with a clip board in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a laptop balanced somewhere in there too, give her a wave and let her know how much her efforts mean to you. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it!

I also wanted to tell you about few other faces to watch for during this year’s program. Last year, Brian, myself, and Group Publisher Lauren McLeod enjoyed introducing speakers prior to the start of every session. While Lauren and I will still be performing that honor, Brian has been freed up to perform additional director-type duties. In his stead, I’m very excited that we will have the esteemed editor of Medical Records Briefings, Andrea Kraynak, on site to introduce the Track Two speakers. Those of you who regularly read MRB know what a great asset it is to have her on board with us this year.

This year’s conference attendees will also have an opportunity to meet Lori Levans and Ilene MacDonald who will be at HCPro bookstore, giving attendees a 20% discount on items purchased during the program. Items include The Clinical Documentation Improvement Handbook, Second Edition, The Physician Queries Handbook, Coding and You: What Every Healthcare Professional Should Know, and the recently released The Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialist’s Guide to ICD-10, among other items. I’ve worked with Lori and Ilene for more than five years now. I’m sure you’ll appreciate their hard work as much as I do.

If you have been an ACDIS member for a while then you probably already know Al Occhipinti, our client relations manager. At least you’ve probably talked with him once or twice. Al’s the person to call if you have a special request or question about ACDIS products. He can help you organize a group conference attendance package or help you arrange to attend a CDI Boot Camp. Al actually lives in Florida so we’re thrilled to have him join us at the ACDIS booth in the exhibit hall this year. Al is the one to see for the special surprise we have for ACDIS members. (No, I’m not telling what the special surprise is. It’s a secret! You’ll see soon enough!)

So while you are enjoying yourself in Orlando, take a moment to say “hello” to one of these folks who help us put together a seamless program for you.

Hilton sold out for April conference, nearby hotels available

We have some “good news/bad news” to report. The good news is that more than 500 CDI professionals have registered to attend the 4th Annual ACDIS Conference in Orlando, April 7–8. That means more of your peers will be available to network with, share experiences with, and learn from. It also means that those who have already made their reservations have booked up the Hilton in Walt Disney World® Resort where the conference is being held.

There are a number of additional rooms available at nearby hotels, some “across the street” from the Hilton (this is Disney we’re talking about). Hotels include:

• Holiday Inn in the Walt Disney World® Resort- has availability from April 5 through the 8th for $129 per night. Call 407/828-8888.
• Royal Plaza in the Walt Disney World® Resort has availability from the 5th through the 9th for $119 per night. Call 407/828-2828.
• Wyndham Lake Buena Vista- has availability from the 5th through the 8th for $109-$129 per night. Call 407/828-4444.

Don’t let the tough economy prevent you from attending the 2011 ACDIS Conference

In these tough economic times it may be difficult to get your facility’s approval to attend the 2011 ACDIS conference in Orlando, April 7-8.   Education and travel budgets have been whittled to the bone and conferences are often perceived  as vacations rather than work.  With this in mind, I offer some ideas you might present to your manager or chief financial officer to help you convince them that sending you to the ACDIS conference is a great investment!

How to afford the ACDIS conference in tough economic times:

1. Share a hotel room with a colleague (or more) and split the cost. You only sleep there, after all. Do you really need a king-sized bed all to yourself?  Get a double and a roll-away-bed. There, now the room costs 1/3 of what you expected.
2. Book airfare at least one month in advance. Everyone knows that the closer you book your flight to your departure date, the higher the rates.
3. Consider booking your travel through online discounters, if appropriate: Travelocity, AARP, AAA, Expedia, Hotwire, Priceline, Kayak, etc.
4. Investigate whether booking air, hotel, and car together (package deal) will save money
5. Look at connecting flights. Sometimes airfares with one (or two) stops are a cheaper alternative than direct flights.
6. Use frequent flier miles for travel. Ask your facility if corporate miles are available.
7. Share transportation with coworkers or CDI specialists you might have met from your local chapter. An extra 15 or 20 minute wait at the airport could save you 50% in taxis, shuttles, if share the cost with a friend.  There’s always someone going where you want to go and if not, ask around!
8. Eat breakfast in the hospitality room (coffee, juices, bagels, etc.) – it’s free!
9. Many meals at restaurants are HUGE. Split an entree with a colleague or save part of your meal for lunch the next day.
10. Buy “credit/debit” cards ahead of time to spread out the cost. For example, you can buy Starbucks cards, VISA or AMEX cards in small increments of $25, $50, etc., possibly one a week from now until conference time and by then you’ll have enough to cover your “incidentals” at the conference.
11. Travel lite. Checked baggage fees can be expensive, so see if you can manage with two carry-on bags and save the checking fee.  If the plane is full, an overhead-sized bag will be gate-checked for free. Consider using soft-sided duffel that will hold a lot but can be squashed into the overhead or under the seat.  You’d be surprised at how much you can fit into a duffel!

Why the ACDIS conference is a good return on investment (for facilities and managers)

1. $795 per attendee for ACDIS members – that’s only $66 a month (or $2.00 a day) out of the education budget!
2. Send five attendees for only $2,780 (early bird member registrants). That works out to only $556 per attendee, saving even more!
3. Compare to the cost of audio conferences or web-inars to the cost of the conference: One audio or web-inar may cost up to $300 (or more). The ACDIS conference provides 23 presentations!!  If offered individually, these presentations could cost $6,900. By attending the conference you’ll receive a bound copy of all the presentations and save over $6,000!!
4. Compare the cost of the conference with purchasing updated training through a consulting company. At the ACDIS conference you’ll get a variety of viewpoints, and the most current, unbiased information at a fraction of the cost.
5. Worried about the transition to ICD-10 and how you’ll train your CDI staff?  Specific documentation in the medical record will be more important than ever once the transition to ICD-10 is a reality.  Make sure your front-line people—your CDI team—is prepared.  A special two-day pre-conference session includes HCPro’s ICD-10 Basics Boot Camp.
6. Consider the Physician Advisor Pre-Conference event. Do you have a new physician advisor or one who nwould benefit from formal CDI training in order to become a more effective collaborator? This one-day session is $695.  Most physician advisor training programs, if acquired from outside companies cost thousands.  When you consider that the timely intervention by a trained physician advisor your facility could potentially recoup this amount by securing the response to one unanswered physician query. Your return on investment is substantial!!
7. You want your CDI program to succeed.  Your CDI specialists WANT to succeed.  You and your team deserve the tools critical to success!  And it’s all delivered at the ACDIS conference in only two days!