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CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797
Premier healthcare alliance helps members achieve record savings of more than $1 billion in 2009
Collaborative projects help hospital members improve quality of patient care, safely reduce hospital costs
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (February 10, 2010) – The Premier healthcare alliance generated record validated member savings of more than $1 billion in its fiscal 2009, while the alliance grew to more than 2,300 not-for-profit hospitals and 64,000-plus other healthcare sites.
Premier experienced growth across its operations committed to enhancing hospital clinical, financial and operational improvement, as well as managing risk. The alliance also realized valuable results from collaboratives dedicated to assisting its alliance members in improving quality of care while safely reducing hospital costs.
"From healthcare reform to a slumping economy, not-for-profit hospitals have faced unprecedented challenges over the last year," said Premier Board Chair Michael Connelly, president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare Partners, a 33-hospital system based in Cincinnati. "The Premier alliance is dedicated to helping its member hospitals meet these challenges head-on and to drive quality and cost improvements even in the most difficult times."
Said Premier's President and CEO Susan DeVore, "Premier prides itself on its ability to bring alliance members together to share knowledge and data. Collaboration among Premier and our member hospitals allows us to use facts to determine which practices, products and solutions will drive the best patient outcomes."
Reducing costs
Premier's supply chain efficiency efforts with members returned a record more than $273 million in cash distributions to its owner not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare systems in its fiscal 2009.
One hundred and fifty hospitals and health systems nationwide representing more than $3 billion in supply chain purchasing volume have to date joined Premier's ASCEND™ (Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor) program, designed to help participants achieve and sustain rapid improvements in supply chain performance and affordability. Since May 2009, participants in the program have reduced their supply expenses in recently launched categories by up to 37 percent.
Premier's Continuum of Care™ (CofC) division added 9,500 of its more than 64,000 non-acute care members during its fiscal year 2009. The new members represent $1 billion of Premier's CofC $5.3 billion annual supply purchasing spend. Premier became the first healthcare GPO to set specific foodservice quality and safety guidelines when it released a set of standards for foodservices delivered to hospitals.
An analysis by Premier and GNYHA Ventures Inc., Greater New York Hospital Association's supply chain enterprise that includes GPOs, suggested that hospitals could improve healthcare quality and achieve cumulative savings of $317 billion if certain policies are enacted to create a more competitive and transparent purchasing environment.
Inflation rates for healthcare supplies are projected to remain unchanged through 2010, according to Premier's Economic Outlook and Inflation Estimates report. The analysis suggests annual market inflation rates will increase on average between 1.6 percent and 4 percent across categories such as cardiovascular services, facilities, imaging and nursing.
To help its member hospitals control supply chain costs while improving quality, Premier released an enhanced version of SupplyFocus®, the healthcare industry's leading supply cost benchmarking and comparative analysis solution.
Improving quality and safety
Premier continued to collaborate with alliance members on both national and regional levels through projects aimed at improving quality while safely reducing costs.
Hospitals participating in Premier's QUEST®: High Performing Hospitals national collaborative saved an estimated total of 8,043 lives and $577 million in the first year of the project. Of the approximately 2.3 million patients treated annually in these hospitals, 24,818 additional patients received treatments that met the highest quality patient care standards when compared to baseline performance at the outset of the project. According to a Premier analysis of these Year 1 results, if non-participating hospitals were able to achieve the improvements found among the QUEST participants, they could save an estimated additional 52,760 lives.
More than 1.5 million patients treated in the Premier, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID)™ value-based purchasing (VBP) project are living longer and receiving recommended treatments more frequently. Participating hospitals raised overall quality by an average of 17.2 percent over four years based on their delivery of 30 nationally standardized and widely accepted care measures to patients in five clinical areas. The HQID project has served as a basis for CMS' proposal to Congress for a national VBP or pay-for-performance program. An additional analysis of HQID results for the first three years showed that there was no significant relationship between designation and either awards or recognition. The same analysis showed that even though these hospitals performed below others at the outset of the project, they had the same likelihood of receiving awards by the end of the third year.
More than 270 hospitals are now using SafetySurveillor®, Premier's real-time application to prevent healthcare-associated infections and optimize antibiotic use.
Alliance member hospitals improved quality and safety while achieving savings with Premier solutions. Bon Secours Health System has reduced sepsis mortality by 120 patients since it began using QualityConnect™, Premier's program to enhance quality of care. The healthcare system also achieved cost savings of nearly $2 million. Premier's SafetyConnect™ program, designed to improve safety and reduce infections, allowed two hospitals in St. Joseph Health System of Humboldt, Calif., to report influenza cases within minutes after requests from public health officials to track all influenza cases around the H1N1 outbreak. In addition, Frederick Memorial Healthcare System saved more than $5 million by using LaborConnect™, Premier's labor management program. OperationsAdvisor®, Premier's Web-based labor benchmarking solution, is part of the LaborConnect program and, when utilized with an on-site Performance Partner, is producing an average return-on-investment of 14-to-1.
Premier Consulting Solutions
Premier Consulting Solutions™ added more than 80 new customers, along with approximately 120 customer engagements, throughout FY 2009.
Premier acquired Phase 2 Consulting (P2C), a leading provider of consulting services to hospitals and health systems. The acquisition of P2C from RehabCare Group Inc. (NYSE: RHB) provides resources to help meet the growing demand for PCS' services.
To help hospitals achieve maximum revenue retention as a part of Medicare's Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program, Premier enhanced its quality benchmarking and regulatory reporting solution, QualityAdvisor™, to include RAC capabilities.
PCS launched ProviderConnect™, a program to bridge the gap between clinical and business processes by helping hospitals and health systems improve quality and outcomes, control costs and increase profitability.
Heartland Regional Medical Center has saved more than $3.3 million by using PCS and Premier technologies to improve quality and safety in cardiovascular services while delivering cost-effective care.
Premier Insurance Management Services Inc.
Premier Insurance Management Services Inc.™ (PIMS), a for-profit corporation wholly owned by Premier Inc., returned more than $791,000 in experience credit payments to 50 hospitals and healthcare systems participating in its Excess Workers' Compensation and Fidelity/Fiduciary sponsored insurance programs. PIMS also produced $1.1 million in validated savings to members participating in other sponsored insurance programs, with savings on employer-paid life and disability products driving the largest annual savings.
PIMS introduced a Clinical Risk Management (CRM) assessment program to evaluate performance and collaboration across the risk management, safety and quality functions in hospitals and healthcare systems.
A new healthcare property risk management program was announced, designed to help healthcare providers reduce costs, improve coverage, minimize losses and deliver a superior level of claims service. As a part of the program, PIMS is now offering a dual sponsorship for property insurance with existing provider Chubb Group of Insurance Companies and newly added Zurich North America.
Premier Advocacy
Premier's Advocacy office was at the center of efforts to advance healthcare reform legislation and has been able to realize important benefits for hospitals, including provisions requiring the Food and Drug Administration to issue unique device identification regulations, a national expansion of the VBP program modeled on the success of HQID, a voluntary bundled payment pilot program and the creation of voluntary Accountable Care Organizations that support hospital participation and leadership.
Additionally, Premier was active in securing funding through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, including a moratoria on harmful Medicare and Medicaid regulations, an $86.7 billion temporary increase in federal medical assistance funding, a 2.5 percent temporary increase in disproportionate share payments, $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research and $19 billion in funding for health information technology.
Premier leadership
Susan DeVore assumed the role of president and CEO, and Keith J. Figlioli joined as senior vice president of Premier's Healthcare Informatics division.
The United States Department of Defense recognized Premier Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Joe Pleasant for his efforts to promote supply chain data standards to enhance patient safety while reducing healthcare costs.
For the second year in a row, Premier has been named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. Premier was also ranked among the top 10 best places to work on Modern Healthcare magazine's 100 Best Places to Work in Healthcare list. In addition, 26 Premier alliance hospital members were named to the list.
About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,400 U.S. hospitals
and nearly 70,000 other healthcare sites working together to achieve high quality,
cost-effective care. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, 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 works 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 offices in San Diego, Philadelphia and
Washington.
http://www.premierinc.com