Learn how your expert peers successfully implement advanced CDI technology

I sat down with Kaitlyn Crowther, product manager for Solventum to discuss resources and targeted content available for clinical documentation integrity (CDI professionals at the 2024 Solventum Client Experience Summit (CES). Kaitlyn specializes in technology solutions to enhance workflows between physicians and clinical documentation professionals.

Why should CDI professionals attend the upcoming Solventum CES, Aug. 12-15, in Dallas?

Whenever I talk to customers, they want to hear about lessons other customers have learned along the way. They want to know how other organizations like their own successfully implement advanced CDI technology, recover from mistakes, adapt to the unexpected and discover new best practices.

CDI leaders and specialists who attend Solventum CES will have many opportunities to learn directly from their CDI professional peers at a diverse range of organizations—including Children’s Hospital of Orange County, St. Elizabeth Healthcare, University of Miami Health System, Penn Medicine, Ensemble Health Partners, CaroMont Medical Group, Advocate Health Care, Wellstar Health System and others.

Attendees will be able to zero in on specific issues their own organization may face and discover new strategic approaches they may not have considered before.

Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Orange County will explore strategies to improve physician satisfaction and how they updated their query strategy.

University of Miami Health System will lead an in-depth practical session on how it customized the CDI staff roles, artificial intelligence (AI) rules and team workflows to prioritize specific goals.

St. Elizabeth Healthcare will share its road map to a successful implementation that ultimately led to getting a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Five-Star Quality recognition.

Click here to view the full agenda and session descriptions for the week.

What do you expect to be the most crucial takeaways for CDI professionals that attend Solventum CES?

It’s hard to predict exactly what will happen because so many spontaneous discoveries can arise when you get such an experienced group of professionals together. But I think a few CDI issues will be prominent.

Customization to target priority clinical conditions and evidence

CDI technology, especially AI and automation, is moving forward very quickly. The evolving electronic health record (EHR) now brings in more new evidence from multiple documentation sources. We can do more than ever to help our customers prioritize, customize and automate their CDI work—while closing workflow gaps with physicians and coding teams.

CDI worklist prioritization is the place to start. When our customers maximize CDI prioritization efforts on their current platform, they can experience a huge bump in productivity.

The next step is to add more AI and automation technology on the front end with physicians to turbocharge results achieved with prioritization. This is where customization comes in. New technology helps customers access evidence to target the clinical conditions most inpatient populations face, which are significant quality drivers as well as diagnosis-related group (DRG) drivers.

It’s much more than just pointing to low hanging fruit, such as specifying the correct stage for chronic kidney disease. We have new best practices to guide customers with evidence for key clinical conditions such as heart failure, pneumonia, malnutrition, sepsis, electrolytes, encephalopathy and many more.

To achieve results that set them apart, CDI and physician leaders need to have buy in on what the target clinical conditions will be and how this aligns with the most acute issues for their own health system, including initiatives already in motion.

How to pace implementation

Biting off too much when launching new technology is a common obstacle to success. It can get messy if you focus on too much too soon. Physicians can get overwhelmed when you turn on too many AI nudges at once. CDI teams can struggle to adapt to complex process changes and connected workflows. And then there’s the fatigue around monitoring success with too many variables. It’s best to focus on evidence for a limited number of targeted clinical conditions when you go live.

How to help CDI professionals function at the top of their license

Health systems are very interested in efficiency and how to make the most of the current staff—focusing on cases with the most opportunity. The best leaders want to empower their CDI professionals with sustainable workflows that allow them to perform at the top of their license. To achieve this, organizations need to implement technology strategically to ensure the best experience and buy-in from CDI staff. Technology should never be an obstacle. It should enhance the best work CDI teams and physicians are already doing.

What about your own experience at Solventum CES? What do you like to do? What do you get out of it?

As a product manager, I like to do a lot of listening. I love hearing from end users and helping them solve their unique problems. When we're chatting, they give me little snippets like: “This button is too close to that one, and I click the wrong one accidentally.” I learn a lot from these little side conversations. I’m always looking for ways to improve customers’ day-to-day experience with technology and user interface.

I look forward to learning everything I can from our customers about the obstacles they face when trying to adopt new technology. How can I help with their decisions? What kind of information and data do they need to move forward? What do their leaders need to know?

This year’s Solventum CES has so much in store for CDI experts along with those interested in connecting and collaborating to help address some of healthcare’s toughest challenges.

Ready to join hundreds of your peers and colleagues in Dallas Aug. 12-15? We look forward to seeing you in Dallas!

Kaitlin Crowther is a product manager at Solventum.

Steve Cantwell is a senior marketing communications specialist at Solventum.