While it seems initial coding audits have become a common practice among healthcare organizations, the importance of continued and ongoing auditing has become lost and forgotten. Keeping up with ongoing auditing is crucial for any healthcare organization as this can prevent revenue from being lost and the amount of unwanted and unnecessary denials from increasing. This also gives healthcare organizations a chance to educate their coding specialists and identify if their coding qualities align with their organization’s quality standards.

Wouldn’t it be perfect if your healthcare organization contained clinical documentation improvement (CDI) specialists that had both a coding background and a clinical background? However, trying to find a person with that background is like finding a needle in a haystack. Most healthcare organizations have a team that contains CDI specialists who are also RNs and a team that contains coding specialists with coding credentials.