The Next Chapter: Faisal Hussain on change, creativity, family, and finding balance

Listen to the episode here. 

A lot has changed in the world of Faisal Hussain since he last went under the white-hot spotlight of the Off the Record podcast studios. 

A new career path, with a new company. 

Growing children, with whom he gets to spend more time. 

A surprise award, bestowed by his college alma mater. 

And many new changes in the CDI industry he continues to serve, including a new ethics paper and now a new physician query practice brief from ACDIS. 

In short, it’s a great time to have back the former Executive Director of CDI at Wellstar Health System, and now newly minted CDI System Physician Advisor at MedStar Health. We’ll get into all these topics and more on today’s show, covering: 

• New role: Who is MedStar Health and Faisal does as CDI System Physician Advisor. And why the major change?  

• New focus: Moving out of CDI operations and into creative projects and technology expansion. Faisal’s work bridging rev cycle, UM/UR, risk management/medical legal, denials and lawsuits–recruiting different leaders across all service lines to standardize and make effective documentation workflows. 

• Working in CDI/coding/healthcare in the utterly unique state of Maryland … what’s going on there and why is every regulation “except Maryland”? 

• What might hospitals be under-leveraging in the physician advisor role?  

• New ACDIS papers Safeguarding Ethical Documentation Practices in Querying, Peer-to-Peer Discussion, and Technological Initiatives and the new physician query practice brief—his work and analysis 

• Surprise recipient of the 2026 Outstanding Alumnus Award from The University of TN Health Science Center 

• Being a father of neurodivergent daughters, whom he now gets to spend more time with. What has he learned from them. Special praise for Tami Gomez and her work starting a Neurodivergent Coding Internship Program. 

• Finally setting the record straight on “Baby Shark” and putting me, the host, in his place…