AHIMA Spotlight

Meet Gregory Davis

Gregory Davis, MHIIM, RN, NI-BC, CHC, RHIA, CCS, CPC, CDIP, CCDS, CCDS-O, CRCR, CSPR, has built a career spanning nearly three decades across clinical nursing, health information management, CDI, compliance consulting, and AI governance. He began his journey as a ward secretary and bedside nurse before moving into EHR implementation, building one of the first formal CDI programs at his institution, and clinical validation auditing. He holds a Master of Health Informatics and Information Management and has earned an extensive portfolio of credentials reflecting his expertise across coding, compliance, nursing informatics, and clinical documentation integrity.

 

What do you see as the most significant challenges and opportunities in health information today?

The intersection of artificial intelligence and clinical documentation is both the greatest challenge and the most exciting opportunity we face right now. We have tools capable of identifying documentation gaps, predicting query opportunities, and flagging compliance risks in near real time, but our organizations often lack the governance structures, workforce readiness, and regulatory clarity needed to deploy them responsibly. Coding accuracy sits at the heart of this same challenge. When documentation is incomplete or inconsistent, coding quality suffers, and downstream impacts ripple through reimbursement, quality reporting, and patient safety data. 

What concerns me most is the pace of adoption outrunning the pace of governance. Institutions are implementing AI-assisted tools before establishing the oversight frameworks, training standards, and audit processes needed to ensure those tools are performing accurately and equitably. The opportunity for HI professionals is to step into that gap, not as passive end users, but as architects of responsible implementation. That means going beyond awareness of AI and investing in a genuine understanding of how these tools work, how they are trained, where they fail, and how to integrate them effectively into clinical and coding workflows. We should be the subject matter experts in the room when vendors are being evaluated, when implementation decisions are being made, and when audit findings need to be interpreted. We have the clinical knowledge, the coding expertise, and the information governance foundation to lead that work. The question is whether we commit to building the technical fluency to match. 

 

Looking ahead, what actions do you plan to take in your role at AHIMA to make the greatest impact on healthcare and patient care? 

My focus continues to be on education and practical application. Through my work on the AHIMA House of Delegates, my service on the CDIP exam development committee, my role on the Journal of AHIMA Editorial Advisory Council, and my upcoming participation in the "A Conversation with AHIMA Fellows" webinar series, I want to help connect what is happening in policy and technology to what practitioners actually need on the front lines. CDI, coding accuracy, and payment integrity are not back-office concerns. They directly affect how patients are classified, how care is resourced, and how providers are paid. I want to make that case clearly and consistently, and I want to do it through the channels that reach the broadest cross-section of the profession, from certification candidates to working professionals to researchers and educators. 

 

What advice would you give HI students and emerging professionals in 2026 to help them thrive and advance in the profession? 

Do not wait for someone to hand you a technology curriculum. The professionals who are thriving right now are the ones who took initiative to understand AI, data governance, and clinical informatics before those skills became required. At the same time, do not abandon your clinical and coding fundamentals. The value of a HI professional in an AI-assisted environment is judgment, context, and accountability. A tool can flag a documentation gap; it takes a credentialed professional to know whether to act on it, how to query appropriately, and how to defend the decision. 

Having spent seven years as an adjunct professor of health information management and working as an AHIMA-Approved CDI Trainer, I have had a long view of what actually moves students forward, and it almost always comes down to that combination of clinical grounding, coding knowledge, and the willingness to keep learning when the landscape shifts. Credentials, clinical grounding, and technological fluency together are what will define the next generation of HI leaders. 

 

Is there anything else you'd like to share with the AHIMA community? 

I became a Fellow in November 2025, and it remains one of the most meaningful recognitions of my career. My AHIMA story started simply. I joined as a student member, found my way to local MSHIMA component association meetings, and raised my hand to volunteer. One opportunity led to another, and over the years that involvement grew into committee work, the House of Delegates, certification development, and eventually Fellowship. 

Looking back across nearly three decades, from ward secretary and bedside nursing, through EHR implementation, building one of the first formal CDI programs at my institution, clinical validation auditing, compliance consulting, and now AI governance work, AHIMA has been the constant thread. The credential framework gave me language for what I was doing. The community gave me peers who understood why it mattered. If you are early in your career and wondering whether AHIMA involvement is worth the time, the answer is yes, without qualification. The connections and credibility you build through active engagement with this community will compound over a career in ways that are hard to see at the start but impossible to miss later.