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Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797

Three members win third annual Premier healthcare alliance Supply Chain Innovation Award

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (June 17, 2009) – The Premier healthcare alliance has honored three alliance members with its third annual Supply Chain Innovation Award for achieving successful innovations that have created new levels of performance and competitive advantage.

The awards were presented in ceremonies during Premier's annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition, which was held June 16-19 in Anaheim, Calif. Winners as determined by a panel of external, internal and member judges are:

Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) of Detroit, which developed a database that captures supply chain contracting timelines. It not only helps track the request for proposal (RFP) process, but tracks savings and cost, increases, avoidances and rebates. These numbers can be reported by each HFHS facility, value analysis team, supplier, contract category, or by various other means. By increasing the operational efficiencies among its staff, HFHS has been able to identify more easily where assessment is needed in the sourcing process and why.
Fairview Health Services of Minneapolis, for deploying an integrated instrument tracking and processing system, which includes interfaces with surgery scheduling, supply chain case cart building and on-site hospital turn center processing. This innovative system enables Fairview to provide timely, high quality instrumentation efficiently and safely to meet the needs of their patients.
Alamance Regional Medical Center of Burlington, N.C., whose supply chain purchasing department changed the culture of the department by adopting "lean thinking" principles to operations. They instilled the mantra of "eliminate muda (Japanese term for waste)," which engaged employees in accomplishing supply chain cost reductions, as well as adopting Premier's tools, technologies and operational efficiencies in the department. This encouraged the staff to continue their efforts, foster an environment of teamwork and improve their department's operations and supply chain significantly.

"The Supply Chain Innovation Award recognizes members that have collaborated with Premier, introducing innovative supply chain improvement ideas to the benefit of the Premier alliance," said Mike Alkire, Premier Purchasing Partners president. "The winning solutions are already creating value for members through improvements in financial health, organizational health and quality."

Premier and alliance member judges included: Deborah Templeton, RPh, MHA, vice president, Supply Chain Services at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Pa.; Lowell Church, vice president, Material Management at Adventist Health, Roseville, Calif.; Larry Fogarty, vice president, Supply Chain Management, Methodist Healthcare, Memphis, Tenn.; and Tom Wright, vice president of Supply Chain Services at Yankee Alliance Inc., Andover, Mass.

Judges for the Supply Chain Innovation Awards included outside experts Dennis Harrison, president of GS1 US Healthcare, and John I. Pritchard, publisher of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting.

For more information, please visit: https://premierinc.com/about/news/awards/index.jsp.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 80,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by hospitals, health systems and other providers, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier has worked with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has an office in Washington. https://premierinc.com. Stay connected with Premier on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.