A day in the life of a CDI specialist in healthcare

The Reveleer team is thrilled to attend the 2025 Association of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists (ACDIS) conference next week in Kissimmee, Florida. At the conference, we’ll be connecting with the clinical documentation integrity, or CDI, community, to discuss the top challenges they face in their day to day as well as opportunities to simplify and advance their field through clinical intelligence technology.

Why healthcare CDI matters in value-based care

CDI plays a critical role in healthcare delivery—CDI specialists work to ensure data integrity, promote better documentation practices, and strengthen relationships with clinicians. As such, CDI helps to power financial and strategic planning, risk adjustment, quality improvement, population health, and even clinical research.  

CDI specialists are often nurses or registered health information administrators or technicians (RHIA/RHIT), and as such, they have deep expertise in the supporting documentation needed to justify diagnoses and procedures.  

However, due to the sheer volume of patients and data, it can be difficult to prioritize which patients would benefit most from their expert review as opposed to those that can be reviewed by technology alone. This is not to mention the huge benefit of having CDI specialists conduct trainings and education with clinical teams to promote better documentation practices, something that takes a significant amount of time away from chart review.  

CDI technology driven by artificial intelligence (AI) offers a powerful opportunity to better focus their time and dedicate their expertise to difficult chart reviews, training, education, and clinical engagement. In advance of the ACDIS 2025 conference, we wanted to take a closer look at the CDI specialist role to better understand all that they tackle and accomplish in a typical day o we can better identify the specific ways advanced technology can support and advance the CDI field.

Charting the day of a CDI specialist

First cup of coffee: starting the day

CDI is highly dependent on the systems used to retrieve and validate patient records. When CDI specialists begin the day, they start by logging into core systems and technology used to track and review patient charts.

Within the system, CDI specialists will check the queue of patients assigned for review that day. They will likely create a prioritized to-do list to help them make sure they review the trickiest patients first and focus the bulk of their attention on high-value activities. These may be patients with incomplete documentation, high-risk conditions, coding errors, or clinical updates. Refining their worklists to ensure their expertise is leveraged on the right patients is a critical first step in their day.  

Second cup of coffee: deep in reviews

CDI productivity is dependent on several factors and drives documentation outcomes. Prioritizing an efficient and streamlined chart review process is key to exceeding productivity goals.  

Despite complex medical records and large volumes of patient data, each patient chart requires a thorough examination. CDI specialists review charts as if the patients were under their own care. They have to ensure that the medical record and documentation align to capture the complete clinical picture of the patient.  

For example, a patient diagnosed with asthma should have supporting clinical indicators in the medical record, like a history of respiratory symptoms, spirometry results, and inhalers. The CDI specialist looks to validate that a diagnosis has supporting evidence and includes the most accurate and specific diagnosis code.  

If the appropriate clinical indicators are missing, the CDI specialist may query the patient’s provider for clarifying information. This process not only helps encourage more thorough and accurate documentation but is also essential to support high-quality patient care. The CDI specialist is an integral part of the healthcare team bridging the gap between documentation, billing and coding, and care delivery.  

Post-lunch stretch: training and education

Because of their extensive expertise in clinical documentation, coding, and compliance, CDI specialists are often deeply involved in training and education. They may spend a good part of their day helping various members of the care delivery team better understand coding and documentation guidelines. For example, after lunch, a typical CDI specialist may host a training session with providers that focuses on under-documented conditions in primary care.  

In their training sessions, CDI specialists are particularly strong at explaining the “why” to clinical teams. They can stress the link between clinical concepts, accurate documentation, reimbursement, and patient outcomes. These training sessions help protect provider time by reducing queries and improving documentation accuracy. Additionally, as the risk adjustment models and regulations continue to evolve, CDI specialists are more critical than ever to keep clinical teams informed of coding and documentation requirements.

A CDI specialist may also spend the post-lunch stretch conducting rounds with the clinical teams they support. When they’re with providers engaging directly in patient care, it makes it easier to mitigate documentation challenges. Working closely with clinicians helps to ensure compliant coding and documentation, accurate reimbursement, and a greater ability to target quality improvement efforts.

Race to the end of the day: reporting and analytics

When CDI specialists wrap up the day, they work quickly to conclude any open chart reviews, closing the loop on queries and updating their system with clinical input. They will prepare end-of-day reports on the number of charts reviewed, any unresolved issues, trends they’re noticing in documentation errors, and the time they’ve spent on non-chart reviews like education sessions or rounding.

Finally, a CDI specialist will prepare their to-do list for the next day, including following up on open queries, planning trainings, and prioritizing charts for review.

Learning alongside CDI specialists at ACDIS 2025

Our team at Reveleer is looking forward to diving into the day in the life of CDI specialists when we join them in Florida at ACDIS 2025 next week. We will share how our value-based care enablement platform can help support CDI specialists by providing:

• One unified platform that integrates seamlessly across diverse EHR systems.

• AI-powered insights to identify gaps in care and documentation.

• Intelligent automation to help prioritize and streamline workflows.

Planning to attend ACDIS as well next week? Set up a meeting with us to tour our powerful technology that saves CDI specialists time and simplifies their day to day.