Deborah is a nationally sought-after leader in the industry. She is passionate about assisting physicians and hospitals in improving their coding, documentation, and business operations to maintain compliance. She will go above and beyond to help industry leaders, physicians, and others achieve excellence. Her motto is, “Documentation excellence is the key to receiving accurate payment.”

Deborah brings over forty years of healthcare industry experience as a practice administrator, medical record auditor, clinical documentation improvement practitioner, and sought-after speaker and educator. She works with a variety of medical specialties. She works with physicians, hospitals, and outpatient facilities, both small and large, and provides practice assessments, revenue cycle guidance, coding, auditing, CDI development, education, and project management. She also provides litigation support to attorneys nationally for their physicians and health-system clients. She is considered a top ICD-10 implementation expert and routinely appears on ICD-10 Monitor’s “Talk Ten Tuesday.”

Deborah combines teaching with practical advice on coding and revenue cycle issues to many national organizations. She has numerous books and publishing credits and has developed coding program curriculum for the American Academy of Professional Coders, Indiana University Health, and Martin University in Indianapolis. In addition to her work at KZA, Deborah was a Senior Manager of Revenue Cycle at Blue and Co., LLC, where she oversaw the consulting division for physician services and worked closely with hospitals and hospital-owned physician groups, assisting with coding reviews, practice operations, ICD-10 implementation, and consulting. She has been Vice President of Strategic Development and then President of the American Academy of Professional Coders, where she oversaw the association’s operations. She owned her own full-service consulting firm for twelve years, leading her team to provide coding, auditing, and revenue cycle guidance to hospitals and physician groups. Before entering consulting, she was a practice administrator at IU Health.

Deborah has a B.A. in Business Administration from Indiana University. She holds multiple coding, auditing, and clinical documentation credentials. She serves as a delegate on the ICD-10 Monitor Editorial Board and Indiana Health Information Management Association Executive Board of Directors. She is the past president of the Indiana Health Information Management Association and the past president of the American Academy of Professional Coders National Advisory Board and served on the board for 7 years. Deborah has served on the CPT Editorial panel, the editorial board of Contexo Media, and currently serves on the editorial board of ICD-10 Monitor. She is the 2017 IHIMA 2017 Professional Achievement and the 2017 AHIMA Literacy Legacy Award recipient.