IHIMA 2026 Virtual Fall Conference

The IHIMA 2026 Virtual Fall Conference will be held on Friday, November 6th. 

Registration is open until Wednesday, November 4th at midnight EST.

REGISTER NOW!

  

FALL CONFERENCE PROGRAM BROCHURE

AGENDA

8:30 AM EST - 9:00 AM EST
Get connected to Zoom. Grab your cup of coffee and get ready to learn!

9:00 AM EST - 10:00 AM EST
Artificial Intelligence and Health Information- A green or red light?

Senior Lecturer at Indiana University-Indianapolis

This presentation will define artificial intelligence. It will also include information about how AI is being used in the health information management field. Participants will learn the benefits and challenges of artificial intelligence.

Revenue Integrity: The Chargemaster Connection

Lindsay Austin, MBOE, RHIA, CRCR, LSSBB
Senior Consultant at Blue & Co.

Agenda Topics:

• Revenue integrity across the full revenue cycle
• How the CDM affects charge capture, coding, pricing, billing, and compliance
• Operating Room level design and charge reconciliation
• Emergency Department facility leveling and monitoring
• Compliance controls, governance, and accountability

Coding Impact on Denials 

Coding and Compliance Strategic Leader at Salud Revenue Partners

This presentation will focus on denials that are impacted by coding; including medical necessity, prior authorization, modifiers and how to resolve them and means to reduce them in the future. How denials can be tracked and effectively managed. 

Presentation Goals:

• Understanding denial reasons
• Review of common coding related denials
• Means to reduce denials

• Effectiveness of working top types of denials

Lunch Break

The E/M Downcoding Crisis: What Every Practitioner Needs to Know 

Executive Consultant at Karen Zupko & Associates

The growing trend of E/M downcoding is creating significant financial and compliance challenges for healthcare providers. Many organizations are seeing claims reduced to lower-level codes, resulting in lost revenue and increased audit risk. This webinar will uncover the root causes of downcoding, explain how payers are applying these changes, and provide actionable strategies to protect your practice. Learn how to document effectively, identify red flags, and implement best practices to ensure accurate reimbursement. If you’re a provider, coder, or compliance professional, this session is essential to safeguard your bottom line and maintain compliance. 

• Understand the root causes of E/M downcoding and why it’s increasing.
• Learn how payers are applying downcoding and its impact on reimbursement.
• Identify documentation gaps that trigger downcoding and audits.

Beyond the Revenue Cycle: Using Analytics to Identify Hidden Documentation and Coding Opportunities 

Thad Perry, PhD
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Bill Dunbar and Associates, LLC 

Healthcare organizations often assume that a well-managed revenue cycle will identify all available clinical documentation and coding opportunities. However, revenue cycle management and clinical opportunity identification serve fundamentally different functions. This presentation will explore why organizations should distinguish between efficiently processing the revenue cycle and using advanced analytics to identify documentation, coding, and reimbursement opportunities that may remain hidden within existing workflows. Attendees will learn how clinical, claims, and longitudinal patient data can be analyzed to identify missed diagnoses, documentation gaps, coding patterns, and other opportunities that complement rather than duplicate traditional revenue cycle activities. Real-world healthcare examples will demonstrate how an analytics-driven approach can strengthen documentation and coding integrity, improve the accuracy of the patient record, and more completely reflect the clinical complexity of the populations healthcare organizations serve. 

Upon completion of this presentation, participants will be able to:

• Differentiate the roles of traditional revenue cycle management and analytics-driven clinical documentation and coding opportunity identification.
• Identify how clinical, claims, and longitudinal patient data can be used to uncover documentation gaps, missed diagnoses, and coding opportunities not captured through existing workflows.
• Describe how advanced analytics can complement existing revenue cycle processes to strengthen documentation and coding integrity and more accurately represent patient clinical complexity. 

This presentation is sponsored by: Bill Dunbar and Associates, LLC

From Clinic to Bedside: Strengthening Quality Outcomes Through Integrated CDI Education 

Lori Ganote, MSN RN CCDS CLIMB
Director of CDI Quality at Velarity HCS 

This session explores how integrated Clinical Documentation Integrity (CDI) education can bridge those gaps and improve quality performance across the continuum of care. Attendees will learn how documentation influences CMS quality metrics, risk adjustment, value-based payment programs, and publicly reported outcomes. Through practical examples, participants will gain strategies to improve documentation consistency, accurately capture patient complexity, and strengthen collaboration among CDI, HIM, quality, coding, and provider teams. Join us to discover how aligned documentation practices can create a more complete patient story, support fair performance measurement, and ensure quality outcomes more accurately reflect the care delivered. 

Objectives:

• Understand how physician documentation across inpatient and outpatient settings directly impacts CMS quality metrics, including mortality, readmissions, patient safety indicators, and public reporting.
• Recognize the role of accurate risk adjustment in reflecting true patient complexity within value – based payment models.
• Identify common documentation gaps between care settings and how collaborative CDI education can improve continuity.
• Apply practical strategies for aligning documentation practices across the continuum of care.
• Quality outcomes, reimbursement, and public reporting all depend on accurate clinical documentation, yet documentation efforts often remain fragmented across inpatient and outpatient settings. 

Registration is fully online. Credit cards and debit cards (Mastercard, VISA, AMEX, Discover) are accepted forms of payment for registration.

REGISTER NOW!

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