Health Information Management

Strategy: Ensure coverage of weekends with CDI staffing plan

CDI Strategies, June 26, 2008

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The Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH, thought of a unique way to ensure concurrent medical record reviews over the weekend—a time when many hospitals lack CDI specialist coverage. Karen Johnson, RHIT, CCS, supervisor of DRG assurance for the Cleveland Clinic, explains how they created a position to fill this need:
 
“Our reason for doing so was to increase coverage of our patients. This was easy to capture in data as our coverage went up. The position was originally 20 hours per week, and was to cover Saturday and Sunday. We found out afterward that there was not enough work for her on Sunday due to low admissions on Saturday. 

So, we split her hours up. She works 10 hours Saturday and covers the house. Her priorities are:
  1. See the new admits that were missed on Friday
  2. Follow a focused list of cases that have a high potential for discharge by Monday.  She has a list of cases for priority such as patients admitted for a hysterectomy on Friday, or mastectomies, shoulder repairs, etc.

On Monday and Tuesday she is assigned to work with our regular staff. We target in on the floors that had high admissions over the weekend or floors that have a high number of outstanding queries. This way she can free up [the other CDI specialists'] time so that they can follow up on outstanding queries, or perform continued stay reviews."



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