Author Archives: Hugh Martin

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