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It is with deep sadness we share that Dr. Michael Dick  (Mike) passed away yesterday afternoon.  He was a physician at Ohio State University, an original stakeholder in Callibra and part of our team from the very beginning.  A colleague and friend to all of us who are part of Callibra and Discharge 1-2-3, Mike was diagnosed with Bile Duct cancer in 2019 and passed away from cancer at the age of 67.  The article below captured some of the sides of Mike and his strong spirit.  Please take a moment to read this recent article about Mike and keep his family in your thoughts:  As COVID-19 rages, Dr. Michael Dick won’t let anything stop him from working – not even cancer | Ohio State Medical Center (osu.edu)

This past weekend Callibra’s CEO Chris Galassi, MD stepped up for the Shave for the Brave event to support Children’s cancer research. Dr. Galassi was one of more than 100 volunteers and shavees in the St. Baldrick’s Foundation’s 2018 Shave for the Brave held in Park Ridge, IL on Saturday, April 7. He admits he didn’t “have a big mop of hair in the first place,” but notes that through this one event location more than $87,000 was raised for childhood cancer research. According to The St. Baldrick’s Foundation, more children are lost to cancer in the US than to any other disease.

Dr. Galassi feels Childhood cancer research is extremely underfunded and St. Baldrick’s helps fund the best childhood cancer research to save the lives of kids locally and around the world. “I am sure Cancer research sometimes seems endless”, he said “but in recent decades there have been real discoveries in treatment of some children’s cancers that have turned dismal prognoses into highly successful survival outcomes for some kids. It’s exciting that there has been real progress but there’s still a lot to do.”

Chris Galassi with Declan Stapleton, event host and owner of The Harp and Fiddle where the event took place

If you still want to help out you can still make a donation at his personal page: https://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/980673/2018

A special Thank You! to all of the following sponsors who assisted with their support on the event:

Law Office of Daphne L. Pals

Richard Brantner

Stephen Dodds MD

Colin Kaide MD

Marie and Michael

Matthew Roberts

Nate Rudman MD PC

Cathy Raschke

Joanna Scianna In Memory Of Richard Oliva

Kathy and Paul Nordhaus

Michael Miedona In Memory Of Richard Oliva

Michael Clifford

Mike Rooney

JBO In Memory Of Monica Harrison Carfrey

Bill Reynen

Hugh Martin

Joyce Nordhaus

Kim Voss

Sarah Wilson

During the holiday season last week a group of Callibra, Inc. dba Discharge 1-2-3 employees helped the organization Feed My Starving Children (FMSC @fmsc_org) prepare meals for hungry children at the FMSC facility in Schaumburg, IL. While they were there, the Discharge 1-2-3 employees with fellow volunteers packed a total of 72 boxes containing 15,552 meals – enough to feed 42 children for a year. Callibra also made a financial contribution.

Pictured (L to R): Chris Galassi, Joanne Baker Osborne, Sarah Wilson, Bill Reynen, Jesse Lee

Founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children is a Christian non-profit that provides nutritionally complete meals specifically formulated for malnourished children. Donations to FMSC are used to procure ingredients, which are then combined into meal formulas and packed by volunteers. FMSC partners with organizations and ministries in 60 countries to distribute the special meals to children in need.

The Discharge 1-2-3 team was glad to help. Chris Galassi from Callibra, said “When you see the work this organization does and the large impact to peoples lives even modest contributions can make, it highlights just how much could be done to support basic life needs.”

To learn more about Feed My Starving Children, or to make a contribute, visit https://www.fmsc.org/.

October 20, 2016 – Chicago, Illinois.

More than 60% of emergency nurses want improved discharge instructions!

Discharge 1-2-3 surveyed nurses at the recent ENA Scientific Assembly in Los Angeles about discharge instructions used at their hospitals, and 140 responded.

The order of concerns, and big Take-Aways illustrate an extremely consistent pattern. Though some users were more or less satisfied with their specific EMR the rank order was always the same.

What were the nurses’ biggest complaints about discharge instructions?

#1 Not patient-specific enough (Consistent overall TOP Concern!)

#2. Need more languages

#3. Want them to be faster and easier to use

What EMRs Did These Users Have?

The survey asked nurses which EMR they used at their hospitals. The most frequently named systems were Epic, Cerner, and Meditech, which mirrors national market rankings. Picis, McKesson, and Allscripts were also used by multiple respondents.

Take-Away #1 – Nurses Want More Patient Specific Content!

When asked which specific aspects of their discharge instructions they would like to see improved, nurses primarily answered: 1) more patient-specific content; 2) more languages; and 3) faster and easier to use. These biggest three concerns far outweighed others.

Take-Away #2 – Rank Order of These Topic Concerns is the Same Regardless of Which EMR is Being Used.

With only a few exceptions, these rankings are not significantly different when responses are broken down by EMR. Compare the proportion represented by each colored segment in the count of respondents below.

Take-Away #3 – What They Would Want Improved was the Same Even for Users More Satisfied with their EMR Discharge Instructions Overall

Epic users tended to be more satisfied with their discharge instructions than users of other EMRs. When asked whether they were satisfied with their current discharge instructions, over three-quarters of Epic users responded in the affirmative. Respondents were not nearly as happy with other EMRs. Yet even for these more satisfied users as indicated in the preceding graph, “More Patient Specific Content” was the most common thing they wanted.

At Discharge 1-2-3^™, we frequently hear complaints from clinicians about other vendors discharge instructions. Although the sample size of this survey was small, the results confirmed the gaps we continue to see in the discharge instructions market. Discharge 1-2-3’s Composer^™ software makes it fast and easy for clinicians to create patient-specific discharge instructions in multiple languages fast and easy for clinicians.

These findings do not surprise us. Do they surprise you?

Hugh Martin

Discharge 1-2-3

Two speakers at the recent Allscripts Client Experience (ACE) conference in Las Vegas highlighted the changes in healthcare IT since 2009. Kathleen Sebelius was US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2009 to 2014, and Dr. Vindell Washington is the current National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Ms. Sebelius began her address by reminding us that historically on a per capita basis the US far outspends other developed countries for healthcare but often gets worse results. According to her, the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were affordable health insurance, delivery system reform, and lower costs through greater efficiencies. To achieve these objectives, the nation needed a more robust health IT platform to drive protocols and payments. Even before ACA, the government was paying over 60% of all healthcare costs. Moving forward, in her view, the government needs to shift from a passive payer to an active purchaser of healthcare, and data analytics are “the name of the game.”

The perspective on the future and the emphasis on “data an analytics” are a resounding and welcome validation of some of the newest research and development avenues at Callibra Inc and its product line Discharge 1-2-3 Composer. Significant projects utilizing customer data and analytics for product improvement have been front and center in the landscape of product direction.

Ms Sebelius concluded by saying that healthcare had been disrupted and had become a totally new market. In her view, calls to repeal Obamacare are moot because there is no longer anything to go back to.

Dr. Washington, an emergency physician, began by citing how quickly the healthcare IT landscape has changed. In 2008, only 13.4% of non-Federal acute care hospitals had adopted basic EHR; by 2015 the adoption rate had increased to 88.3%. He stated that his passion is for all people to have equal access to quality healthcare. His belief is that IT positively affects healthcare, and that interoperability in particular is foundational to meeting his department’s national healthcare priorities, which include precision medicine, delivery system reform, the “Cancer Moonshot,” the opioid crisis, public health, and research and innovation

Although the vast majority of his speech was devoted to the progress healthcare IT has made recently, he said he is often reminded of the challenges that remain. In his opinion, the healthcare IT industry is not as responsive or fast-moving as it needs to be. When he was an intern starting out in medicine, he said that it took 17 years for information from research databases to be incorporated into EMRs. He was chagrined to hear recently that it was still taking nearly that long.

It is sometimes helpful for those of us in the healthcare trenches to get the view from 50,000-foot level.

Hugh Martin
Discharge 1-2-3

Discharge 1-2-3 and Allscripts jointly previewed the integration of Discharge 1-2-3’s Composer software into Allscript’s Sunrise system at the ACE (Allscripts Client Experience) 2016 Conference in Las Vegas last week. Composer makes it fast and easy for clinicians to create customized discharge instructions and patient education in multiple languages. Plans are to make Composer available for all Sunrise emergency department, inpatient, and ambulatory venues by early 2017. Composer is already integrated into all Allscripts ED systems.

At a session entitled Sunrise and Discharge 1-2-3 Integration, Mary Chorley, Senior Manager, Solutions Management at Allscripts, provided an overview of Composer and how it will enhance Sunrise. She said that Composer will be seamlessly integrated into Sunrise.

Dr. Chris Galassi and Mary Chorley Present at ACE

Dr. Chris Galassi, CEO and Product Director for Discharge 1-2-3, then demonstrated Composer, showing how it will work in Sunrise. His presentation highlighted several of its capabilities.

ACE is the place every year for Allscripts users to learn best practices and find out what’s on the road map for all Allscripts products. More than three thousand attended the three-day conference this year, with many stopping by the Discharge 1-2-3 booth to get a personalized Composer demo and discuss integration plans. ACE 2016 was a great opportunity to catch up with customers, prospects, and our partners at Allscripts.

Hugh Martin

Eric Garnett, Clinical Specialist – Emergency Services at the TriStar Health Division of HCA, presented an educational session at the 2015 International MUSE Conference entitled Implementing Improved Discharge Instructions in Meditech Magic at HCA. Dr. Chris Galassi, CEO and Product Director for Discharge 1-2-3™ Callibra, Inc., co-presented. HCA is integrating Discharge 1-2-3 software into all its hospitals that use Meditech Magic with plans to upgrade to Composer this year.

The presentation showed how good discharge instructions contribute to patient outcomes and organizational success, and demonstrated how discharge instructions can be upgraded in large, matrixed organizations that use Meditech Magic. Topics covered include:

• How discharge instructions contribute to outcomes, safety, and performance
• What HCA looks for in discharge instructions
• Challenges HCA has faced regarding discharge instructions in the past
• How HCA is implementing this new solution system-wide
• Value to HCA of integrated, customizable discharge instructions

According to Dr. Galassi, it is believed that ninety million Americans have difficulty understanding their own care, and that between forty and eighty percent of information communicated is forgotten by the time a patient gets home. Recent studies confirm that discharge instructions:

• Can reduce readmissions when combined with follow-up by hospital staff
• Improve quality of patient care
• Increase patient satisfaction
• Strengthen hospital finances
• Reduce risk
• Support regulatory compliance

Eric indicated that the 15 hospitals in HCA’s TriStar Division together discharged 610,000 emergency department patients last year. TriStar has high standards for its discharge instructions, which include the following criteria:

• Patient-specific
• Evidence-based
• User-friendly
• Easy to support
• Compliant with regulatory requirements
• Integrate into Meditech Magic
• Include meds, follow up, excuses

Although implementing the new solution across such a large system has presented challenges, the project has been well-managed and according to Eric has already demonstrated significant value for TriStar and HCA:

• Integrates with existing Meditech system
• Improves clinician efficiency
• Compliant with Meaningful Use
• Approach is flexible and scalable

Please drop me a line if you would like to see the entire presentation.

Thanks,
Hugh Martin
Discharge 1-2-3
hmartin@discharge123.com

Dr. Chris Galassi, Discharge 1-2-3™s CEO and Product Director, and Kathy Davis, Sr. Product Manager for Allscripts ePrescribe, presented on ePrescription Research and Usage in Allscripts ED at the Allscripts Client Experience (ACE) conference in Chicago on Thursday, August 14. Discharge 1-2-3 recently integrated Allscripts ePrescribe into its Composer software, and the new version–Composer eRx– will be available to Allscripts ED hospitals later this year.

Galassi chronicled the growth and benefits of eprescription and demonstrated how eprescribe will function within Discharge 1-2-3’s Composer software, while Davis detailed the regulatory requirements for electronic prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS).

In 2013, according to Surescripts, 58% of eligible prescriptions in the US were routed electronically, representing a 32% increase in volume over the previous year. This rapid adoption took place because eprescription is now a Meaningful Use measure for both hospitals and professionals. ePrescription drug overdose surpassed traffic deaths as the leading cause of preventable death in 2011, and two out of three prescription errors are caused by illegible handwriting, misunderstood abbreviations, and unclear dosages. Prescription fraud continues to be a substantial problem despite efforts to create tamper proof prescription materials.

ePrescribing reduces medication errors:

• More than 1.5 million patients injured annually by drug errors.
• One study estimated that each preventable adverse drug event (ADE) that took place in a hospital added about $8,750 to costs.
• Handwritten prescriptions are often difficult to read, requiring pharmacy callback for clarification.

The benefits of eprescribing are now well-known and include:

Improved patient safety – fewer ADEs.

• Increased efficiency – less time wasted clarifying prescriptions.
• Better medication adherence – promotes appropriate drug usage.
• Cost savings – fewer preventable ADEs and improved throughput.

Finally, Galassi demonstrated how Discharge 1-2-3’s Composer seamlessly integrated Allscripts ePrescribe into the Allscripts ED workflow.

If you would like more information about Composer eRx, please contact us info@discharge123.com.

Thanks,
Hugh Martin
Discharge 1-2-3
hmartin@discharge123.com

Discharge 1-2-3 debuted three new products at the Allscripts Client Experience (ACE) conference last week in Chicago:

• Composer eRx™ enhanced version of this award-winning software for Allscripts ED hospitals that seamlessly integrates Allscripts ePrescribe into discharge instructions workflow.
• Composer for Sunrise™ Composer™s easy and fast point and click customization and advanced integration will soon be available to Sunrise hospitals.
• Arabic language content – Arabic joins Spanish, Chinese, French, Vietnamese, Russian, and Somali discharge instructions and patient education content available in bi-lingual format.

Dr. Chris Galassi, Discharge 1-2-3’s CEO and Product Director, presented on two topics:

• ePrescription Research and Usage in Allscripts ED, with Kathy Davis, Sr. Product Manager for Allscripts ePrescribe, on the conference’s Allscripts ED track.
• Discharge Instructions Research and Compliance, on the Sunrise track.

Reaction to the new products was very positive, as you can see by this post from a Sunrise user who visited the Discharge 1-2-3 booth and saw a demo of Composer:

Please contact us at info@discharge123.com you have any questions about Composer eRx for Allscripts ED, Composer for Sunrise, or Arabic content for discharge instructions and patient education.

Thanks,
Hugh Martin
Discharge 1-2-3
hmartin@discharge123.com