By Beth Friedman, FACHDM, Sr. Partner, FINN Partners
LinkedIn: Beth Friedman
LinkedIn: FINN Partners
Host of FINN Voices
The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) recently held its 2025 Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, setting a vision to empower, evolve, and impact. As a 20+ year veteran of this event, I can wholeheartedly attest that health information (HI) professionals are ready to live out these verbs and digitally transform their roles.
From clinical coders to enterprise vice presidents leading national teams, the new mission for these professionals is to reinvent their operational processes through the responsible use of automation, AI, ambient documentation, and autonomous coding. All these solutions were well-represented at AHIMA25 in hundreds of educational sessions and vendor booths.
Speakers repeatedly shared their success stories using a human-in-the-lead (and in-the-loop) approach to AI adoption. As Jami Woebkenburg, RHIA, MS, CDHI, FAHIMA, Senior Director of HIMS Operations at Banner Health, explained, “We’re here to provide guidance, counsel, and support to our health systems’ leadership teams. HI professionals are the proven stewards of patient data integrity and management. Our expertise ensures front-end data needs are met as new technologies are installed, resulting in reliable, accurate, and consistent information to fuel AI solutions and positive, long-term outcomes.”
HI professionals are essential stakeholders in digital transformation. The technology is ready, and the time is now. Here are my key takeaways and insights from AHIMA25.
Mindset Shifts from Restrictive to Responsible Data Sharing
HI professionals are the unsung protectors of patient privacy. They often serve as privacy officers and compliance chiefs, with a thorough knowledge of HIPAA rules and the 21st Century CURES Act.
However, advanced data exchange technology, combined with a renewed federal commitment to interoperability, has shifted privacy attitudes from protectionism to responsible governance. In his session, “Rethinking Minimum Necessary in the Era of Continuity of Care,” Hassan Abdallah, JD, CHC, FACHDM, Chief Compliance Officer for MRO, reiterated the industry’s commitment to maintaining trust by adhering to all privacy rules and laws.
Data protection remains the utmost priority, but new technological advancements make information sharing smarter and faster. Here are three essentials to know:
- Today’s healthcare ecosystem is defined by interoperable networks, AI-enabled Release of Information (ROI)systems, and appropriate workflows that enable multi-entity care coordination.
- Focus shifts from point-to-point ROI transactions to timely, holistic data exchange, emphasizing intention, strong internal policies and procedures, and operational compliance.
- HIPAA privacy rules are modernized to expand permissions for care coordination and case management across non-provider entities, such as health plans and social services.
Minimum necessary is a foundational pillar of the 1996 HIPAA law, and the standard means even more today as a greater number of stakeholders need access to clinical data. Compliance today requires clarity, classification, and control. It is the engine of scalable trust.
AI Expedites Case Review to Improve Revenue Integrity and Quality Processes
Multiple sessions explained how intelligent technologies expand a health system’s ability to review and correct cases before claims are even sent. These incremental wins reduce denials and improve revenue. Here are three specific areas discussed at AHIMA25.
Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI): According to Staci Josten, RN, BSN, CCDS, SVP Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) Services, e4health: “Greater efficiency in the CDI process has never been more promising or available.” AI automatically identifies cases for review and performs an initial sweep to highlight gaps requiring a human eye.
“CDI specialists won’t be replaced, but they will be dramatically more efficient,” Josten noted. The ability to review a greater number of cases is especially important in second-level reviews, where CDI specialists compare assigned codes with clinical documentation before billing.
Josten is also bullish on ambient documentation’s positive impact on CDI: “As physicians embrace ambient documentation, the CDI specialist can better validate information and ensure everything lines up.”
Amy Larson, RN, MBA, Vice President TruBridge Encoder, concurs. She lists four ways ambient documentation will expedite revenue cycle process:
- Reduce bill hold days
- Hasten completion of physician documentation
- Move documentation and coding closer to the point of care
- Create more consistent documentation, reduce discrepancies between inpatient and professional fee coding, and ultimately mitigate payer denials
Denials and Appeals: The adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” is especially true when it comes to claims denials and payer appeals. Automated denial analytics and appeal dashboards move revenue cycle teams from reactionary to preventative, guiding internal audit activity and focusing resources on high-impact areas. AI-generated appeal letters based on payer, case types, denials codes, and other parameters further streamline the process.
Dawn Crump, MA, CHC, LSSBB, Vice President Revenue Integrity Solutions at MRO, suggested three new areas for proactivity in the year ahead: payer policy changes, specific payer nuances, and global risk areas.
For optimal denial prevention success, Abhinay Vyas, Founder and Chief Data Officer at RapidClaims, added that payers respect a solid source of truth during payer-provider claims conversations. Coupling correct codes with provider documentation that properly supports them is another proactive measure to prevent denials and avoid the payer appeals process altogether.
Quality Reviews and Registry Reporting: Disparate data sources are the biggest challenge facing quality review professionals. New solutions discussed at AHIMA25 accelerate the collection, curation, sharing, and reporting of registry and quality measures data, regardless of the source.
“Smarter data solutions are a tremendous asset during quality reviews and registry compliance,” said Bryan Wojnowski, MBA, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at MRO. Health systems can automate the very task of curation itself, using AI to pull information from notes and uncover the data needed by registries. AI then provides structure to answer registry questions and populate quality metrics.
Autonomous Coding Moves from Pilot to Production
In their session, “Rewriting the Mid Cycle: GenAI’s Role in Protecting Margins and Elevating Revenue Integrity,” executives from Cleveland Clinic and Duke University Health System described progress made with large language models (LLMs) and autonomous coding technology from AKASA. Both speakers reiterated that using AI tools will make clinical coders and CDI specialists much more productive and successful in the future.
As Nick Judd, MBA, RHIA, Senior Director Revenue Cycle Management, Health Information Management (HIM) at Cleveland Clinic, explained, “Revenue cycle staff won’t be replaced by AI, but those that use AI will replace those that don’t.” I believe the same holds true for clinical coders.
Here are three insights and outcomes shared during this session:
- A retrospective pilot revealed 8–12% of cases had hidden coding opportunities after professional teams had already coded them. Judd terms this effort “finding the breadcrumbs of lost revenue.”
- LLMs also provide coders with the logic and evidence used to assign a code. This step builds trust between the technology and the coder.
- The AI has become a coder ally versus a threat, according to Jennifer Nicholson, M.Ed., RHIA, CCS, CCDS, CDIP, RRT, Associate Vice President, Revenue Management and Health Information, Duke University Health System.
For now, Duke University Health System follows its normal coding process. AKASA works behind the coder to find revenue or quality impact elements from the patient story. Coders can give feedback, accept, or decline the AI’s recommendation.
Judd concluded by saying that perfection is the enemy of progress, “The faster we lean in and adopt these technologies, the better rev cycle will be across the industry.”
Maverick Medical AI, another autonomous coding vendor, also reports success automating radiology case processing. According to Monica DuBois, Vice President of Business at Maverick, one imaging center achieved an 87% direct-to-bill coding rate with 95% coding accuracy, reduced denials, and lag-time cuts from over one day to less than two minutes for coding.
While most significant success has been seen in simple, repetitive, high-volume cases, I personally believe the hockey stick of progress is ahead. Autonomous coding will explode—just like ambient documentation has taken off—as technology improves and HI professionals realize that AI is a friend, not a foe.
Final Four Sessions Offer New Insights to Reinvent Legacy HI Processes
The last four sessions I attended took me back to my Health Information (HI) roots with conversations about coding, faxes, ROI, and record retention. While AI is just beginning to touch these areas, experts shared valuable insights on how technology and workforce changes are advancing the HI profession.
Here are my final AHIMA25 insights to consider and share with your HI, IT, and revenue cycle peers.
Single-Path Coding: In her jam-packed session, “Single-Path Coding: Upskilling Coders to Perform Both Facility and Professional Coding,” Lolita Jones, MSHS, RHIA, CCS, CRC, CPC, explained why health systems should consider single-path coding. This approach assigns the same coder to both the facility and professional fee components of a single case.
The benefits are significant: reduced costs (fewer coding team touches), increased charge capture, reduced lag days, and mitigated risk of payer denials.
Given the growing trend of physicians becoming hospital employees, having one coder assign both facility and professional fee codes for each case simply makes sense. Jones shared an upskilling toolkit and best practices for organizations moving forward with this approach.
Automated Record Retrieval: Three corporate HI executives from SSM Health, Yale New Haven Health System, and Trinity Health (representing 121 hospitals across 33 states) shared their accomplishments and best practices for using technology to automate Release of Information (ROI) workflows.
The most impressive outcomes centered on the use of MRO’s automated record retrieval for risk adjustment requests from payers. Automated retrieval uses technology to instantly pull requested information from EHRs and other systems, compiling a packet of electronic information to send to the requestor.
Across all three systems, the accuracy rate ranged from 80 to 90%, with any questionable cases routed to a ROI specialist. Large request lists are now completed in hours versus weeks, significantly accelerating revenue from request processing.
According to Emilie Sturm, Senior Revenue Management Consultant at Trinity Health, “At one point in late 2024, we received a large payer project for risk adjustment requests. We were able to complete thousands of requests within a few days. The revenue really helped the bottom line at the end of the year.”
Sabrena Gregrich, Director of Corporate Health Information Management at Yale New Haven Health System, reiterated the positive impact on payer relationships: “We haven’t heard a peep from payers for risk adjustment requests; it’s been a beautiful thing.”
Incoming Fax Management: I was surprised to hear from Caleb Manscill, MBA, President of Vyne Medical, that the healthcare providers are still plagued by fax machines. Vyne Medical is working to bring AI capabilities into the management of faxes and other manual documents. Manscill envisions a future where every conversation—even a verbal conversation, handwritten physician order or refill request—is captured, digitized, and brought into the EHR.
Legacy Data Access: The final session focused on the oldest pieces of patient information: clinical data contained within legacy IT systems. Shawn Fichter, PmC, CEO of Legacy Data Access, suggested a new way for IT leaders to determine which data should be taken offline versus kept in an active archive for clinical access.
“It all boils down to asking your clinicians what data they need in the active patient record and for how long,” Fichter suggested. Clinical systems like laboratory, neurology, NICU, and cardiology monitoring may stay relevant throughout the patient’s history, especially for chronic disease states, and EHRs can only hold a fraction of this data.
Tests and treatments tend to be repeated when clinicians can’t see historical results. Clinicians prefer to see up to five years of prior care on a single screen without having to search for it.
Fichter’s session introduced cyclical archiving. This concept supports Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)efforts while also providing data management, resiliency, and a clear legacy system retirement plan. With 24% of security incidents traced back to outdated systems, cyclical archiving programs represent a win-win for clinicians and IT teams alike.
2026 in San Antonio
Next year’s AHIMA convention is scheduled for October 4-6, 2026, in San Antonio, Texas. I look forward to more case study success stories in AI, ambient documentation and autonomous coding. The technology is ready, the workforce is prepared, and the time is now for HI leaders to empower teams, evolve processes, and impact health outcomes for the betterment of all.