Health Information Management

Q&A: Measuring the dollar impact of CDI

CDI Strategies, May 1, 2008

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Q: If I review a chart and query the physician in order to obtain a CC, and the physician answers as I had hoped—but then the patient has another illness during his or her hospital stay that would be listed as a CC as well—should the CDI specialist count the chart as dollar impact generated by the CDI program? I have heard several different explanations as to why this should be counted as impact—and also why not. Thanks so much for your help.

A: We do not take credit for capturing a CC if it's not the only CC. We feel that the DRG would have been there without our intervention. Our measuring stick for financial impact is whether our intervention impacted the DRG assignment.

(Tamara Hicks, RN, BSN, CCS, manager of care coordination for North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC, answered this question).



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