Leverage Technology to Boost Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) Impacts

We have shared updates on how and why to build a clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programand how to measure the value of CDI. The final article in our series provides information about the benefits of augmenting CDI programs with technology.

Automation and analytics-based CDI management solutions leverage artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and clinical decision support to achieve regulatory compliance and proper reimbursement. By delivering advanced technologies, CDI solution providers are transforming the CDI process, creating efficiencies to support the accuracy of the documentation and reporting process.

CDI systems enabled by AI and ML can justify the medical necessity of a service while reducing time spent on retroactive and low-value tasks. Further, CDI technologies integrated with computer-assisted coding (CAC) provide robust NLP, natural language understanding (NLU) processing, improved communication capabilities, electronic queries, and automation improvements that include auto-queries.

These advanced functionalities mean that CDI’s value goes beyond financial. According to respondents to an ACDIS survey, advanced CDI increases productivity by allowing CDI professionals to process more charts each day, perform more work remotely, and better identify “low-hanging fruit” queries so staff can focus on more complex issues. It also increases collaboration with other departments and roles, monitors and improves known documentation issues with high-volume diagnostic-related groups (DRGs), and ensures prioritization of service types with smart worklists or smart queues.

Regarding reporting, CDI technology reduces disruptive retrospective queries and minimizes query response times. It alleviates physicians’ administrative burdens and increases accuracy and efficiency for both physicians and CDI teams while optimizing and unifying physician workflows within the electronic health record (EHR). It also enhances physicians’ confidence by delivering immediate value on high-priority CDI objectives.

El Paso Children’s Hospital is a prime example of the value derived from a comprehensive technology-enabled CDI initiative. The 122-bed pediatric hospital had been dealing with the challenges created by its legacy system, including slow, complex, and time-consuming processes and overreliance on manual methods for CDI – including query tracking, which also increased the cost of its CDI specialists. Inadequate documentation was driving revenue leakage, and the lack of performance tracking hindered its ability to improve quality and financial performance.

After implementing an AI-enabled CDI platform from AGS Health, El Paso Children’s realized:

• 50 percent improvement in CDI productivity
• 95 percent reduction in time to manage its daily census
• 90 percent decrease in reporting time
• 95 percent increase in physician agreement rate

Numerous other real-world examples demonstrate the financial and quality impacts of technology-enabled CDI on healthcare organizations that can be drawn upon to build the business case and communicate the significant value of CDI. One facility, for instance, realized a 13 percent increase in coding accuracy – from 85 percent to 98 percent – and improved revenue by $42 million over three years after implementing AGS Health’s AI-powered CDI platform.