staff vacation coverge

dvitalone1

Hello, I'm a new CDI team lead and prior to my arrival there was no coverage of cases (meaning re reviews) when a CDI was off for 2 days or greater. I find this disturbing. I am trying to implement a vacation coverage process and was interested in ideas and process that you may have in place realted to this. Thank you in advance for your information.

katysuegood@gmail.com

For us, coverage starts on day #2 of unexpected PTO or right away if we know the person will be our for vacation for a week or so. We have PODS of CDI's. These have 3 CDI's that are responsible for covering each other (and arranging vacations). This is to avoid having every CDI in conversation every time someone is out. Its easier when there are just a couple CDI's splitting the load. The remaining 2 CDI's in the POD split the re-reviews and new reviews (we are geographic) amongst themselves. DRG reconciliation waits for the CDI to be back unless there are extenuating circumstances.

dvitalone1

Thank you Kathryn, how many CDI do you have?  We have 6 including myself s a working Lead.

katysuegood@gmail.com

currently we have 7. not including me. I don't do concurrent reviews or provide converge so I am not included in a POD. It worked better when we had 6. I think 3 person PODS are ideal because 2 people can reasonably cover the missing person and communication is easy because its only between those two. When we didn't have the PODS it was rather chaotic because they were trying to split an assignment amongst 5 people. The expectation is that in usual circumstances only one person should be out per POD for vacations (barring holidays). occasionally more than one person is out from a POD due to illness, then the other POD will help. The 4-person POD is harder because its more likely more than one will be out and involves more complicated provision of coverage.

dvitalone1

Very interesting concept. Thank you for sharing!

katysuegood@gmail.com

I actually got the idea from someone else on CDITalk ;-)