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Tip: Consider these three ground rules for getting coders and CDI specialists on the same page

CDI Strategies, June 26, 2008

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Hospitals that are planning to launch a new CDI program (or re-launch an existing one) should strive to get coders and CDI specialists on the same page from day one, says Marion Kruse, RN, MBA, a director with FTI Consulting in Atlanta. Kruse suggests that CDI program managers should lay down the following ground rules:

1. A CDI program is a partnership—it’s a CDS’ job to get the documentation to the coder so that they can do their job. A good CDI program should eliminate “coders agonizing for 15 minutes in the medical records department over whether something should or shouldn’t be coded,” says Kruse.
2. A CDI program does not teach CDI specialists to code, it teaches them to assign the correct DRG. “Coding is a profession that requires you to go to school, and it’s also an art,” Kruse says. “It takes time—it’s not something that you learn overnight, you develop it.”
3. Correct coding should be a cause for celebration. Coders will occasionally report a different final DRG than the working DRG that a CDI specialist assigned, often because of the nature of coding rules. Likewise, coders have their bad days and CDI specialists may ask a question that makes the coder realize he or she did not code the record correctly. Celebrate these disagreements, because they represent good teamwork and result in a clean, correct DRG assignment, Kruse says.

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