ACDIS celebrates CDI professionals annually with a full week of recognition for the profession through activities, education, and fun. This year’s CDI Week theme is Knights of the CDI Round Table, celebrating the magic in everything CDI professionals do as they brave new documentation adventures, fight inaccuracy, and unite the healthcare community at round tables that intersect quality, coding, and clinical practices.

Each year leading up to CDI Week, ACDIS conducts a survey to gain insight into the state of the industry. This year’s survey included questions about provider engagement and education, query practice and compliance, denials mitigation and CDI involvement, outpatient and risk adjustment, and pediatrics and neonatal CDI. It marks the 16th annual CDI Week Industry Survey, continuing more than a decade and a half of industry evaluation.

“CDI programs often need the CDI Week Industry Survey to serve as a benchmark for their program and their organizations. We can check, ‘Are there areas where we are weaker than our peers? What is our physician engagement like? Are we doing better than expected or worse?’ ” says Okemena Ewoterai, BSN, MA, CCDS, CDIP, CCS, director of CDI at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York. “It may serve to help us course-correct or adjust not only our workflows, but our expectations. The same would apply to individual CDI specialists, as some of us track our own metrics and perhaps we can surface issues to our leaders that we’ve been wanting to address, this time with better evidence. For a new CDI professional, understanding the industry you’re entering can also be very informative.”

This year, 874 respondents took part in the survey. Although this report will not discuss every survey question in detail, readers can examine all the responses in table format beginning on p. X.

Survey respondents were first asked their title and role to understand the field’s current demographics and scope of positions. In line with previous years, the role of CDI specialist was chosen by the largest number of respondents (29.96%), followed by CDI manager (20.10%) and CDI director (14.03%). For the second year in a row, CDI educator maintained its spot in fourth place over other leadership roles (such as CDI lead or supervisor) by a small margin, chosen by 5.69% of respondents. CDI lead did see a small increase, however, from 3.66% in 2025 to 5.56% in 2026. (See Figure 1.)

This year, there are some changes to highlight regarding respondents’ organization type. The percentage of respondents working in an acute care hospital has continually decreased year-over-year since the first time this question was asked in 2021, chosen by 26.04% of respondents in 2026 in comparison to 29.72% in 2025. Conversely, there has been a slow increase in the number of respondents who are a part of a healthcare system with multiple sites, but in 2026 the number jumped a notable eight percentage points over the previous year, for a total of 46.27%. These trends speak to the broader trend of stand-alone hospitals consolidating into healthcare systems, an increase that shows no sign of slowing. (See Figure 2.)

When asked about time in their current role, 34.01% of respondents said between zero and two years, slightly higher than in 2025 (31.89%), while 28.45% said between three to five years, compared to 31.39% in 2025. Overall, these numbers stayed largely consistent with previous years, showing only a small uptick that coincides with the trend of more CDI professionals in newer roles. When asked about their time in the profession overall, the percentage of respondents who said between 11 and 20 years continued to see a small year-over-year increase, from 40.30% in 2025 to 42.85% in 2026, indicating that longevity in the profession is common. (See Figure 3.)

When asked for their number of facility beds, respondents generally gave numbers that were consistent with previous years; 23.38% of respondents reported their facility has up to 400 beds, 31.86% reported between 401 and 1,000 beds, and 19.47% reported more than 1,000 beds. (See Figure 4.)

The total number of health system beds reported by respondents remains stable year-over-year. The most common number of beds was 3,001 or more, chosen by 28.95% of respondents. Consistent with the previous year, 37.42% of respondents said that, on average, their organization saw 10,000 discharges or more annually. (See Figures 5 and 6.)

Since 2025, we have also included a question regarding the size of CDI departments. Answers were spread across the board, though more than half of respondents said that their organization currently employs between 11 and 50 full-time-equivalent CDI staff (53.86%). This year, “101 or more” was added as an answer option and selected by 9.23% of respondents. (See Figure 7.)