Physician Champion

nursronnamnursronnam
in CDI Talk Archive
We are currently looking at the prospect of having a Physician Champion for our CDI program. I would like from those programs that have one in place to share the time commitment for your physician. Is it full time? Do they only support the CDI program or include UR/RAC support? Thanks for any information you could provide.

Ronna Mahlen, RN, BSN, C-CDS
Vally Medical Center
Renton, Washington
ronna_mahlen@valleymed.org

Comments

  • katysuegood@gmail.comkatysuegood@gmail.com
    edited May 2016
    Currently our Physician Liaison is also chief of the Hospitalists. He is also the liaison for UR (although they are transitioning that to another MD) and for Clinical Values. See our problem? Our hospital is mid-range (~250 beds), and our CDI program is small (2 RNs) but he does not have nearly enough time to be involved in the way I would like. He does try to help and we have an hour meeting every-other week, but we often wait months for feedback on issues and he is not available to help with difficult MD's. It is not his fault, he just has a ridiculous amount of responsibilities.
    However, for our size hospital, I do not think it would even need to be 20hours a week. If we even had him 5 hours a week, that would be great!

    When I went to the HCPro Bootcamp, there were several MD's there who were physician liaisons. I think having that kind of training is very beneficial.

    Good luck!

    Katy Good, RN, BSN
    Clinical Documentation Program Coordinator
    AHIMA Approved ICD-10CM/PCS Trainer
    Flagstaff Medical Center
    Kathryn.Good@nahealth.com
    Office: 928.214.3864
    Cell: 928.814.9404

  • kmckaigkmckaig
    edited May 2016
    Our physician champion is not full time. He is a hospitalist but not employed by the hospital. He is the UR physician champion as well and is chair of the UR committee and member of QA committee as well. Time commitment I would say is on average 4 hours a week. It is wonderful. He has been in the role about a year as UR but has only had the CDI component about 6 mos.


    Karen McKaig, BSN, RN, CCM, CPUR, CCDS
    Case Manager
    Clinical Documentation Specialist
    Baxter Regional Medical Center
    Mountain Home, AR 72653
    870-508-1499
    kmckaig@baxterregional.org


  • lsipos@monument.healthlsipos@monument.health
    edited May 2016
    I too, would be very interested to know the "role" of your physician champion. For our institution, the Champion is employed by our hospital as a "Hospitalists", and his time commitment to our program is about an hour a month! I would love to know how to further engage him! Currently he meets with us prior to the monthly "Hospitalists" meeting, and we tell him areas of concern and areas for improvement. He then takes that information to the meeting where the CDS announces those areas of concern again. He is supposed to re-iterate these issues throughout the month and continue to be an advocate for the program and a resource for other physician.
    However, there is very little buy-in (though getting better) for our program, so there seems to be very little the "champion" actually does. Can you further explain the role of the physician champion at your institution?
    Thanks!

  • kmckaigkmckaig
    edited May 2016
    Our Hospitalist Physician Champion is very good. We are lucky. I will
    do education to the physicians including Power Point Presentations. We
    will prepare the initial presentation then he will "tweek" it by putting
    in additional info and "physician-speak". He makes those presentations
    to the medical staff during their meetings. He also will review cases
    from either the CDS or coders to validate diagnoses listed on DCS of
    other doctors. What I mean by this is that if a doctor puts a dx in the
    dcs that we're not sure there is compelling evidence to support it, we
    will have our physician champion review it from a physician's
    perspective to either validate clinically the presence of the dx or to
    say, "no evidence of" which tells us what our next step should be.
    Also, he will come to our CDS-Coder Task Force meetings if needed to do
    education for us. Lastly, he gets the "Coding Corner" articles by Dr.
    Pinson and will forward those to the CDS for us to learn from and use in
    education of docs. Lastly, as part of his UR Chair duties, if there is
    a physician who is not completing H & P's or DCS timely, he may also
    have a word with them about that.
    I don't believe he has a "job description" as such at this time but his
    contract with the hospital for these other functions is pretty broad.

    He was great to work with before these other duties but since he has
    taken on these roles, he has been fantastic!



    Karen McKaig, BSN, RN, CCM, CPUR, CCDS
    Case Manager
    Clinical Documentation Specialist
    Baxter Regional Medical Center
    Mountain Home, AR 72653
    870-508-1499
    kmckaig@baxterregional.org


  • sharon.colesharon.cole
    edited May 2016
    We're still trying to get one here.

    Sharon Cole, RN, CCDS
    Providence Health Center
    Case Management Dept
    254.751.4256
    srcole@phn-waco.org

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