3M DocMs vs. CDIS

vleadbetter@cmcvtx.org

I am looking for some advice...

We currently use the 3M DocMs software and are considering moving to the 3M CDIS software. If anyone has used DocMS and moved to CDIS I would appreciate your feedback:
ie- Is it a superior product?
Are you glad you changed?
What is the biggest difference between the two?
Has it made an impact for your reviewers?
Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks,


Vickie Leadbetter, BS, HIM
Clinical Documentation Improvement Coordinator
Citizens Medical Center
2701 Hospital Drive
Victoria, TX 77901
361-572-5103 phone
361-582-5752 fax

sbeatty

Is it a superior product? Yes

Are you glad you changed? Yes

What is the biggest difference between the two? Real time guidance and education with all the resources immediately available-no more flipping through DRG Expert! Ability to track financial impact of queries IF you have the implementation input to make sure you're HIM abstracting software imports the APR and financial data. Ours doesn't and we had no idea about that until after the implementation was completed and the reports wouldn't populate financial or SOI/ROM data. Make sure you have CDS involvement in the software implementation. We now must wait until after our new EMR implementation is final-probably a year.

Has it made an impact for your reviewers? It slowed us down at first because you're using an encoder and we aren't coders, we're RNs. It's been 6 months now and I've learned how to breeze through those questions in the encoder for the most common diagnoses. We're a 250 bed hospital doing only Medicare and Medicaid reviews (for now). Today I did 13 new admissions and 7 re-reviews in about 4 hours. We modify the CDIS queries to include our medical staff-approved diagnostic criteria.

3M has developed a good product. We stopped contracting for 3M reporting years ago and do the reports ourselves. Make sure that the CDSs sit through the coder training, and make sure everyone is on the same page regarding who is responsible to enter what into CDIS for retro-queries and those concurrent queries answered in the DC Summary. Otherwise, you're data isn't valid. We learned the hard way that coders had different notions about how to enter data for queries. Dr. A was queried, but Dr. B answered. Some changed the query MD name to Dr. B and some didn't. We sent out MD report cards with invalid response rate data, and we heard from the star performers quickly that they KNEW they were more than X% on their response rate-and they were right. We had to redo all of them. You don't need something like that to lose face with your docs!!

It's pricy, but if fully functional (ours isn't) you will pay for it in improved query opportunities and staff education regarding the detail level needed by the coders in real-time, allowing for more concurrent vs retro-queries.

jolene.file

We are transitioning to 3M's CDIS in March. Thanks for the positive feedback about the product. Can I have your email address so I can contact you if we have questions when we get up and running?