RE: CDI Expansion.. question for Don

Don
How many beds? And do you cover all payers
thanks

Tracey


-----Original Message-----
From: CDI Talk [mailto:cdi_talk@hcprotalk.com]
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 8:47 AM
To: Carey, Tracey T
Cc: Tammy.Werth@coxhealth.com
Subject: Re: [cdi_talk] CDI Expansion

Tammy,

We have had a couple of cycles of expansion for a variety of reasons. I would caution that one does not want to expand to soon or too fast. If most of the CDS's are not fairly solid, I suspect that can lead to problems. Secondly, expanding too fast is also problematic -- I've found there is a real limit to how many new CDS's we can properly train. This limit is pretty small -- 2 new CDS's were a big challenge (normally have 9, last time I hired had 2 positions that came open).

As far as expanding program targets & goals, sounds like you have some very admirable goals. I am thinking it might be better to expand your staffing first before fully expanding into many of the areas you're considering. Might also be a good idea to slight stagger some of that to allow training and practice cycle to occur on each new area of emphasis.

An (accurate!) working DRG can be very helpful -- helps to focus consideration on the individual pt for benchmarking or comparison on expected length of stay. It can give a real impetus for keeping on the ball for the proactive management of individual patients.

One of the biggest things to keep in mind as you expand either the program size and target population OR expand the role into core measures/other -- make sure to keep an eye on metrics and expectations and adjust accordingly. Reviewing & querying for core measures (for example) would likely have some negative impact on # cases reviewed. Buy in has to be there from administration and support given to staff.

Core measures is an area that I personally get leary about -- concerned that it can be a large sink hole to fall into.

Don

>>> "CDI Talk" 1/28/2012 6:45 AM >>>
Hello everyone,

I manage a CDI program at a 563 bed hospital in Southwest Missouri and am in the process of looking at an expansion of the program and was wondering if anyone could give me any feedback to assist in this process. We currently review all pts with a DRG based payer but I would like to expand out to all inpatient admissions. I am also looking into adding core measures into the documentation we review. Have any of you made an expansion such as this? If so would you share the advantages and disadvantages you have encountered? I also wonder if having a working DRG assigned to each inpatient admission would benefit the organization in evaluating patient throughput if any of you have worked on this I would like to hear the feedback.

Thanks

Tammy



Tammy Werth
CDMP Manager, HIM Documentation Improvement CoxHealth Tammy.Werth@coxhealth.com
Phone: (417) 269-7040
Mobile: (417) 631-0040



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