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Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
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Premier healthcare alliance enhances solution to help hospitals control costs through supply cost benchmarking, comparative analysis

SupplyFocus™ enhancement driven by increased use among 700-plus hospitals, will focus on pharmaceutical cost-saving opportunities

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (June 11, 2009) – To help its member hospitals control supply chain costs while improving quality, the Premier healthcare alliance has released an enhanced version of SupplyFocus™, the healthcare industry's leading supply cost benchmarking and comparative analysis tool.

The latest enhancement to SupplyFocus, used by more than 700 hospitals and healthcare systems, allows users to more quickly and easily identify pharmaceutical cost-saving opportunities. Pharmaceutical spend currently makes up 15 percent to 20 percent of a typical community hospital’s total operating cost.

Said Premier Purchasing Partners President Mike Alkire, "Due to the current economic conditions, healthcare facilities are increasingly focused on controlling costs that fall directly toward the bottom line. Over the past year, Premier subject matter experts have worked with our alliance members to identify and refine pharmaceutical analysis using nine therapeutic classes. With this enhanced version of SupplyFocus, hospitals can go beyond basic cost analysis, focusing on benchmarking and comparative analysis, using a virtually unlimited number of user created peer groups."

SupplyFocus offers reporting at the facility and integrated delivery network (IDN) levels. Significant growth in use among its users occurred at both levels of reporting between October 2008 and March 2009. At the facility level, use increased by 63 percent, while at the IDN level, use increased by 161 percent. In addition, audit reporting, an indicator of increasing data submissions, increased by more than 50 percent during this time period.

Also made available through these enhancements is benchmarking and comparative analysis to users of Premier's PharmacySpend™ application, which allows for near real-time analysis of pharmaceutical purchasing patterns. PharmacySpend is a component of SpendAdvisor™, Premier's spend management decision-support tool that helps health systems reduce supply chain expenses, thereby benefiting patients and communities by applying innovative solutions to keep healthcare affordable.

"The combination of SupplyFocus and PharmacySpend provides a comprehensive analysis of current and past purchasing behavior, while also providing an 'outside look' focused on identifying best industry practices," said Marv Feldman, MS, RPh, Premier Consulting Solutions managing principal for Pharmacy Consulting.

SupplyFocus now targets nine American Hospital Formulary Service (AHFS) based therapeutic classes. Accessing data supplied to Premier by pharmaceutical wholesalers allows hospitals to look at indicators for each of the nine therapeutic classes, while also taking into consideration patient volume. By going beyond basic cost analysis, hospitals can now deliberate how utilization impacts resource consumption by specific drug type.

In addition to utilization, SupplyFocus looks at four categories of purchasing: on-contract; off-contract exact; off-contract equivalent; and non-contract. By analyzing this data, hospitals can determine which purchasing strategies result in the lowest possible acquisition cost.

The latest reporting capability is in addition to the existing SupplyFocus cost analysis functionality, available for seven high supply utilization departments, and at the facility and IDN levels.

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.