Many of you know and love the CDI Pocket Guide, our annual reference resource that many CDI departments consider indispensable. So this week we’re asking, how do you use your CDI Pocket Guide?

The 2017 Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guidelines to be published in the March 2017 issue of Critical Care Medicine have adopted the 2016 Sepsis-3 definition of sepsis as “life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection” discarding the Sepsis-2 definition of sepsis as Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) due to infection.

Even after Medicare officials agreed that seniors cannot be denied coverage for physical therapy and other care based on their condition not improving, NPR News reported this week that patients are continuing to be turned away.

Intensive care units are expensive, invasive, and supposed to be reserved for the sickest hospital patients, but more than half the time, they're not needed, according to research from LA BioMed and UCLA, HealthLeaders Media reported.

The 2017 updates to ICD-10-CM included many additions to the digestive system diagnoses, especially with codes for pancreatitis and intestinal infections. The codes largely focus on the lower gastrointestinal (GI) tract, according to an article published in Just Coding.

Q: Can coders change the principal diagnosis assignment without querying the physician?

A: Once the principal medical diagnosis is determined for a specific encounter it usually does not change.

There’s still time to honor that special colleague who helped make a difference at your facility, someone who made significant contributions to the CDI field, or is an outspoken advocate of CDI! The deadline for ACDIS Achievement Award nominations has been extended to Friday, February 17, 2017.

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the joint Tennessee Health Information Management Association/Tennessee ACDIS local chapter meeting. The Tennessee Hospital Association kindly hosted the all-day event at their wonderful facility in Brentwood. The theme of the meeting was The Impact of ICD-10 and Payment Reform on Clinical Documentation Improvement.