Highlights of the Candello Summit

Thank you to everyone who joined us in Boston and who logged in remotely for our 2024 Candello Member Summit and Coder Collaborative. It was a terrific three days with our friends and colleagues, and much was shared and learned. Enjoy a highlights reel from the event.

Summit Recap

We kicked off with a presentation from CRICO program directors Jay Boulanger and Kristin O’Reilly and clinical leaders at Boston Children’s Hospital, the Cambridge Health Alliance, and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. They spoke about the improvements they’ve seen in patient access, clinical outcomes, and sustainability by partnering with their medical professional liability (MPL) provider to create Ambulatory Safety Nets that target population health opportunities, such as cancer screenings and pediatric mental health.

Then Drs. Adam Schaffer and Chris Landrigan spoke on the topic of return on investment (ROI) for patient safety, a growing expectation that everyone is facing as patient safety leaders fight for limited resources at budget time. The presenters offered that the non-financial value of patient safety, quality, and satisfaction demonstrates “net zero ROI”—they neither lost nor made money from a patient safety intervention. Still, it at least paid for itself through risk, loss, or cost avoidance.

At lunchtime, we heard from MPL communications consultant Dave Poston about the role that media and social media can play in the financial and reputational outcomes of high-profile MPL cases. He highlighted the aggressive ways the plaintiffs’ bar uses media and social media to vilify health care organizations and shape negative perceptions of providers for potential jurors or the public.

After lunch, CRICO Vice President Carl Kallenberg reviewed and discussed the wide range of “tools” (high/low agreements, mock trials, data, etc.) that today’s claims professionals use to get the best outcome in challenging cases and trials. Knowing which tool to use when—and why and how—can mean the difference between a case closing without payment and one that results in an eight-figure outcome.

CRICO VP of Analytics Jonathan Einbinder finished the day with a review of the top risks in Candello for 2024. He mapped these against ECRI’s annual top 10 patient safety risks identified through incident reports and other sources. There was significant overlap or affinity between Candello MPL data and ECRI data.

Jillian Skillings and Emily DeStefano, CRICO’s data literacy program leaders, opened day 2 of the Summit with the importance of data literacy in the evolving healthcare and business worlds and shared how CRICO has developed and rolled out a mandatory data literacy training program for all employees. They also shared an analysis of a data literacy assessment that 19 Candello clients completed in advance of the Summit. The good news: Those 19 individuals scored very highly.

Next, three outside experts—Mike Thompson from Press Ganey, Tom Gaither from the Institute for Health Metrics, and Attorney Matt Keris from Marshall Dennehy—engaged in a lively panel discussion on artificial intelligence and how it is being used right now and could be used in the future—and the potential malpractice risks it introduces.

Immediately following the panel, “human intelligence” experts Susan Jackson, Kim Cano, and Beth Gallagher from the Candello Coding Team provided a look inside the data creation process, (i.e., clinical coding). The team explained how they turn varied source material into the data that collectively feed the Candello database and enables the robust analytics that Candello members conduct.

Over lunch, CRICO Patient Safety Program Directors Maggie Janes and Jen Sanchez shared how they have used the CRICO and Candello analytical tools in their daily work and with CRICO member organizations to quickly and credibly point out opportunities for them to improve patient safety and reduce their malpractice risk. After that, Candello’s Systems and Software Team Lead, Byron Navarro, hosted an interactive game of Name That Tool by presenting use cases in the form of questions and having the audience decide which tool would provide the answer.

The Summit portion of the event closed with a presentation by Candello’s Patient Safety and Risk Consultant, Christine Ringler, and CRICO Patient Safety Program Director, Annette Roberts, on the key findings from the forthcoming Candello Annual Benchmarking Report about Clinical Documentation.

The Coders Collaborative kicked off on Thursday morning with a motivating presentation by Cassatt RRG’s Maureen Barnes and Amy Meehan. They shared the great success of a program funded by the captive insurer to help one of its member hospitals cope with the closure of two nearby hospitals and the tsunami of new patients in their Emergency Room, particularly mental health patients whose lack of services were creating a logjam and under-serving those patients.

Susan Jackson and Candello’s Head of Business and Client Operations, Marcus Boggis, then shared the results of coding audits and facilitated a discussion of the coding methodologies and evolving questions and opportunities to enhance all aspects of coding.

Over lunch, Kim Cano and Beth Gallagher hosted a fun and engaging game of Coding Jeopardy, in which a team of virtual participants was pitted against in-person participants to quickly and correctly match a clinical scenario with the Candello taxonomy code that represents it. Watch ESPN for the results!

Candello Patient Safety and Risk consultants Christine Ringler and Ann Donahue then shared how the work of the coding team informs and influences the analyses that they provide to Candello members—coding and data in action.

The Collaborative concluded with CRICO VP of Analytics Jonathan Einbinder and Susan Jackson engaging in a strategic conversation about the plans for the taxonomy, code sets, the use of artificial intelligence, and the planned new products for clients.

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