Hello everyone. This is Erica Spicer Mason with
Becker's Healthcare. Thank you so much for tuning
into the Becker's Healthcare podcast series today.
So today we're going to talk about unlocking
CDI's
future from SOAP notes to smart systems.
And joining me for this conversation, we have
with us two leaders from Coro Health. We
have Doctor. Geralyn Morrissey, the chief medical officer
and Kaltrina Barisha, vice president of product management.
Doctor. Morrissey, Kaltrina, thank you so much again
for making time for this today.
Our pleasure. So happy to be here with
you, Erica. Thanks for inviting us.
Yeah. So thrilled to have you both with
us. And I thought to get us started,
it would be helpful
for our listeners to hear just a little
bit more about you, doctor Morrissey and Kaltrina.
I know Coro Health, we we've had some
this is not your first podcast episode by
any means, but just thought it'd be helpful
to give our listeners a sense of where
you're coming from and your your background in
health care.
Doctor Morrissey, do you wanna get us started?
Thanks. Sure. Happy to. So as you said,
I'm doctor Geralyn Morrissey. I am currently the
chief medical officer at CoroHealth.
CoroHealth
is a,
has a suite of technology solutions
in the revenue cycle to support both payers
and providers,
and we try to remove the friction in
that relationship.
And my background has been,
diverse. I I started off practicing primary care
and then transitioned
into revenue cycle where I've worked for both
the payer and the provider side of things.
And most recently, I've been really focused on,
regulatory expertise in the Medicare Medicare Advantage space.
Kaltrina?
Yeah. Well, thank you,
for for this great podcast and,
inviting us. And my name, as you mentioned,
is Kaltrina Viresha, and I am the vice
president of product management for Coral Health.
I lead our product life cycle and strategy,
for the different solutions that doctor Morrisey just
mentioned. And,
my I've spent as a product leader my
last fifteen years really working closely with clinicians
and health systems
to create solutions that bring together
complex health care workflows and advanced technology.
So solutions that support CDI,
support better clinical decision,
and really streamlining the revenue cycle process, and
last but not least, ensuring compliance.
Well, it's so great to learn more about
you both. Thank you again for sharing a
bit more about your backgrounds.
And it was also great to see CoroHealth
at Becker's Health IT event this fall.
For listeners who may not know, CoroHealth actually
hosted a summit at the event.
It was a great conversation. And, doctor Morrissey,
I I wanted to just have you elaborate
a little bit more on something that you
talked about at the summit.
There you shared that there's there was this
fascinating evolution of medical documentation
that started
essentially in ancient case reviews in Egypt, and
it's evolved to the modern EHR. So we'd
love to hear a little bit more about
that from you and the lessons
that you think are most relevant from that
journey or evolution as we're entering this AI
era of clinical documentation integrity.
Well, I think the secret's out, Erica, that
I'm a I'm a student of history. I'm
a I'm a strong believer that if we
understand the past, it'll it'll help improve where
we're going, and we don't repeat the same
mistakes. And
I loved tying that all together during that
summit for folks because
what really stands out to me is that
as we trace the history of physician documentation
and like we talked about at the summit,
it dates all the way back to 2,000
BC in Egypt where the first medical records
on papyrus
documented
some core elements
like observation
and exam findings and diagnoses
and treatment plans
that we can trace those exact elements
all the way through history
up until 2025,
and there's still core elements to physician and
provider documentation.
And what that tells me is that, you
know, in the practice of medicine, we knew
from the beginning what needed to be documented
and communicated,
not only to care for our patients,
but also to advance the field of medicine
and the study of the science that is
involved there.
Now as time went on, that documentation
met up with advances in technology, and those
advances in technology
were occurring in a parallel path.
And we moved from papyrus,
to paper,
eventually to technology and electronic
documentation. And with that, there were good things
that came from it and and not so
good things that came from it.
And, of course, you know, the biggest transition
that we've had historically has been the transition
from paper to the electronic medical record or
EMR.
And with that transition, one of the things
that I think we often lose track of
is we took those core findings
of observations,
exam findings, diagnosis, and treatment, and we said,
okay. Now we also want meticulous
documentation that allows for advances that are going
on in coding and billing and advances that
are going on with regulatory and compliance. And
we also wanna use it to prevent errors
and ensure quality and use clinical pathways and
optimize workflows
and have interoperability
and portability
and any other ability that you can think
of that I haven't just listed.
And with that came just just eons and
and gobs and gobs and gobs of data.
And so now we could analyze
all of that.
So with the merge between documentation
and technology,
we created this battlefield,
where financial, clinical, and payer priorities
all collide,
and they all want something from the documentation.
And that tension
that every provider, every organization out there feels
is the reality of this intersection of all
these competing priorities.
And, unfortunately, again, studying history,
as hospitals and health systems have tried to
solve or alleviate that tension,
the solutions have frequently been to add more,
add more layers, add more reviews, add more
queries.
And now we've gotten to this unsustainable
point in history
where the administrative
overload
on documentation
has resulted in clinician disengagement,
and it's almost like what we've been striving
for with all of this advanced technology
is kinda starting to fall apart.
And that's not the direction we needed to
go, and that's not optimizing
documentation
integrity and the role that
technology can play in documentation
integrity.
And that's where
Kaltrina and I have really been focused on.
We want our providers
caring for our communities and health systems where
they bring the biggest value, and that's at
the bedside with the patient.
We want them focusing their time and efforts
there and on the treatments
and and helping patients,
not on learning the recent coding and billing
rules so that they document with the utmost
of specificity.
And that's where we think technology can come
in and really help to alleviate some of
that administrative
burden
and and help resolve some of that clinician
disengagement.
Doctor Morrissey, what storytelling? Thank you so much
for sharing all of that with our listeners.
I can't say on a another podcast episode
I've ever talked about 2,000 BC in Egypt
or.
So this is a first and but truly,
jokes aside,
it's a really important, I think, evolution that
you've noted and how we've gotten to a
point where things are feeling unsustainable
for clinicians, for back end teams.
And now it's almost as if we need
to take
the wonderful technology advancements that we have in
front of us, but have them simplify things
back to
make them feel simple as they were many,
many years ago.
So thank you so much again for sharing
all of that. And, Kaltrina,
I'd love to now kick it over to
you to get some more insight on the
product and operations side of things. So how
do you see those technologies bridging the gap
between clinical documentation,
you know, not just as a compliance task,
but also as a real tool for clinician
understanding and decision support?
Yeah. That's that's a great question. I think
we're we're finally seeing technology
close this long standing gap between documentation as
a compliance task and a tool for true
real clinical insight. Right? So for years, documentation
was about billing and audits necessary,
truly necessary, but it didn't always add value
for clinicians. Right? And so as I mentioned
at the at the summit,
now with generative AI, which is
more advanced technology
and the emerging agentic AI, we're creating systems
that
actually understand
clinical context so they don't just capture what's
said. Right? They're interpreting intent. They're surfacing insights
and
even guiding clarifications
in real time.
So that's that's especially powerful if if we're
talking about pre prebuilt CDI
where
identifying gaps or or indicators really means stronger
accuracy, right, and integrity without really slowing
our clinicians. And as doc Morrissey mentioned, the
goal is to make sure that, you know,
our clinicians are truly focused in helping our
community and our patients out there and let
us do the
the the back end and and really integrate
an AI as a true assistant to their
day to day.
From an operations lens, that drives huge efficiency
rate, faster chart reviews, faster fewer denials,
and really an overall cleaner revenue cycle process.
So
I think more importantly, though, it makes documentation
meaningful again.
It becomes a a live in intelligent part
of care, not just a compliance checkbox.
Making documentation meaningful again. I I really appreciate
that phrase, Kaltryna.
Thanks so much for for sharing your insights.
And I think it's important also to kind
of walk our walk our listeners through what
what you both see is ahead.
Doctor Morrissey, maybe you can take this one.
What's one actionable step that you would recommend
to leaders to really strengthen their CDI programs
and maybe even more importantly, really position their
organizations to adapt to change that's inevitably ahead?
Well, Erica, I hope you'll indulge me. I'm
gonna go with two instead of just one.
Sure.
You know, so I think anybody listening who's
involved in healthcare is gonna agree with this
statement that, you know, unsustainable
economics
are converging with powerful advances in technology and
science right now, and innovations are accelerating.
And so anybody listening to this could probably
pop into their email box and see,
a million emails out there with organizations
promising automation and generative AI and,
natural language processing and machine learning models. And
my first recommendation
for an actionable step is
if you haven't done it already, really get
an understanding about what all those terms mean.
What is automation? What is analytics? What is
natural language processing? What is generative
AI? What is agentic AI?
I see those phrases thrown around so much,
and they're often used interchangeably
or like they're synonyms, and they're absolutely not
synonyms.
They all do different things. And so if
you get the wrong product that doesn't solve
your problem because the term was used in
a, what I'll call, a loosey goosey manner,
you're gonna end up disappointed. So that that
would be the first thing that I would
say and recommend is is the first actionable
step.
The second actionable step, which is to be
bold. We have to be bold as we
move forward, and that means that we have
to be what I'd call constructively
destructive.
So we need to look at,
workflows
and procedures
that we have followed for years and years
that were designed to support manual processes.
You can't just take those workflows and procedures
and processes and put them into a technological
world and expect the improvement that you need.
We have to be willing to look at
those and say, does that workflow still make
sense with a technology
added in? And then I think with those
two things combined
as your first steps as you're entering into
these things,
you're really gonna
find that you're going to get success faster.
Don't be afraid to fail, but be agile
when you fail and and use that as
your guiding light.
Love that. So it sounds like getting that
foundational understanding
of the differences between AI, natural language processing
automation,
understanding they're not synonymous,
step one. Step two, be bold,
constructively destructive, like you said, doctor Morrissey. I
think these are fantastic and actionable tips that
listeners can take away.
Kaltrina,
what comes up for you here? Is there
anything we didn't touch on or or any
final thoughts that you wanted to leave us
with?
I would just say that we're an exciting
point in the health care technology,
you know, with generative AI and agentic AI
interoperability
and the FHIR frameworks.
Have really
been helping physicians finally and CDI teams and
health system to work together more,
efficiently. Right? And so I think
technology and regulations will continue to evolve. So
organizations that pair smart tools with ongoing feedback
loops and training and collaboration between clinicians, CDIs,
and, really, operational leaders as well will be
best positioned to stay ahead.
So,
you know, my recommendation is that when we,
as clinicians and AI collaborate in the workflow,
we're we're not just improving efficiency, we're improving
outcomes. And we're really improving trust as well
and the overall patient story, right, which is
the most important
aspect of all of this.
Yeah.
Appreciate that note ending on the importance of
the patient story. I know that's what ties
you both back to your work and so
many other listeners back to what they do
every day in health care. So doctor Morrissey,
Kaltrina, thank you again for for this great
discussion today and for making time for Becker's.
I really appreciate it. Thanks, Eric. It's always
our pleasure.
And we'd also like to thank our podcast
sponsor for today, CoroHealth.
Listeners, please be sure to tune into more
episodes from Becker's by visiting our podcast page
at beckershospitalreview.com.