Dr. Daxa Clarke is the Chief Medical Information Officer and a Pediatric Hospitalist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. As the CMIO, she is involved in projects that leverage IT resources to affect change in physician workflows, clinical documentation, utilization management, patient safety, and quality.
Previously, she was the Medical Director for Clinical Documentation Improvement/Utilization Management (CDI/UM) at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. As Medical Director of CDI, Dr. Clarke has provided education to medical staff and house officers on CDI, DRGs, CC/MCCs, SOI changes, audits, and denial management. She led the hospital’s efforts for continuous monitoring for CDI queries using programming logic. She developed several documentation guidelines, leading change in the hospital’s diagnosis capture rates. In these endeavors, she has engaged the medical staff in transforming clinical documentation and developed recognition programs to reinforce positive change.
As Medical Director of UM, Dr. Clarke has been involved in medical necessity assignments, peer-to-peer discussions and appeals, and overall length of stay management and utilization review. She chaired the Utilization Management Review Committee for the hospital. She has been involved in all levels of denial management related to level of care assignments and DRG assignments, including active involvement in contract discussions. She has been involved in the redesign of the hospital’s Call Center, helping to create workflows for the acceptance of patients from outlying clinics and EDs, admissions from PCP offices, transfers from outside hospitals needing higher level of care, and admissions internally from the hospital’s ED.
Dr. Clarke is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Arizona College of Medicine—Phoenix and continues to practice as a pediatric hospitalist. She has previously served as the Clerkship Director for Pediatrics for the medical school. She also developed, and previously led, the Fellowship Program for Pediatric Hospital Medicine at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. She is board certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Hospital Medicine, and Clinical Informatics.