Outpatient CDI is not a traditional discipline—and so it stands to reason that its practitioners don’t always hail from traditional backgrounds.

One such person is Glenda Bocskovits. I’d call her a former transcriptionist, but she still practices that craft with the Mayo Clinic. But Glenda has since expanded her career into cutting edge practice as an outpatient CDI specialist with Catholic Health.

We get into Glenda’s unique career path, the obstacles of breaking into CDI as a non-clinician, and address the eternal question: What is the ROI of OP CDI? We cover the following topics:

• Transcription: That’s still done? It is (hear why).

• The ROI of outpatient CDI

• Catholic Health’s thorough process of OP CDI chart review: Prospective, current/pre-bill, and retrospective

• Common conditions requiring clarification and what continues to trip up providers

• A day in the life of: What Glenda’s job entails

• Obstacles of getting into CDI as a non-nurse and strategies for landing elusive interviews

• Glenda’s career motivations and song selection for the Off the Record Spotify playlist

Social Determinants of Health, or SDOH, are a buzzword these days—but often little more. We acknowledge their importance, but actual progress on capture (and subsequent patient support) has been slow. To be fair real barriers including technological limitations and limited financial incentives stand in the way.

But my current guest understands better than most the major role SDOH play in patient health. He and his organization have developed a digital tool to facilitate capture and improve the lives of patients in their community. They’re making a difference.

Dr. Pablo Buitron de la Vega is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medical Director, Preventive Medicine Residency, and Clinician Lead for the THRIVE Social Determinants of Health Program at Boston Medical Center / Boston University School of Medicine. A native of Ecuador, he’s made SDOH his mission.

On this show we cover:

• Dr. de la Vega’s long journey from Ecuador to U.S. physician, the obstacles he overcame, and how the experience shaped his mission as a provider
• Defining SDOH and common examples in his line of work as a Boston physician
• Basics of capture in ICD-10 and what makes SDOH difficult to collect
• Boston Medical Center’s SDOH capture tool, THRIVE: What it does, tangible benefits, and how your organization can get access
• Low-tech strategies for SDOH capture you can implement today
• Dr. de la Vega’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop a triage tool to help address patients’ unmet social needs

I’ve been in the coding and CDI worlds since 2004, and in that time watched the rise of Facebook, YouTube and other social media. And as early 2011 or so I began to wonder, will anyone pair these two together?

When will see our first social media creator in the world of medical coding, making it his or her full-time gig?

I’m pleased to say that the day has arrived. Victoria Vo is a Medical Coding Educator, Auditor, YouTuber, Entrepreneur, and founder of Contempo Coding, LLC. Her YouTube channel has 187,000 subscribers and she's created close to 600 videos, some of which have racked up more than half a million views.

If you’ve met or seen Victoria you know this did not happen by chance. She’s a natural educator, charismatic and personable. But she’s also very knowledgeable about coding, passionate about the profession, and an outspoken industry advocate. We get into all this and more in a very social episode of Off the Record.

On this show we discuss:

• Victoria’s coding origin story
• Contempo Coding, the business and what it’s about
• Becoming a creator: Challenges and early side-hustle successes, timeline to earning her first $, and how she left coding to become full-time entrepreneur
• Three times she was recognized as a coding celebrity outside of AAPC conferences
• Advice for someone who wants to pursue content creation
• A joint ChatGPT rant (we both sound off on how we use it, and see it abused)
• What makes for a good coding professional
• Other fun stuff including her top resources and Off the Record Spotify playlist selection