The Natural History of CDI Programs: A Metric-Based Model.

The success or failure of a clinical documentation integrity (CDI) program is often evaluated using a designated set of metrics. However, these metrics change over time, and an understanding of these changes is critical to properly judge the efficacy of the CDI effort. The authors propose a model of the natural history of a CDI program based on commonly used CDI metrics. The authors believe that this model can assist CDI leaders in anticipating and understanding the course of CDI performance over time.