HEc, Premier partner to drive
big savings for members in Iowa
Established in 1983, Health Enterprises Cooperative (HEc), in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a regional group purchasing organization organized as an Iowa cooperative. As a shareholder in Premier and Premier Purchasing Partners L.P., HEc makes Premier programs and services available to its members and affiliates and creates regional programs to complement Premier national programs. The Health Enterprises family of companies also includes mobile imaging services; physical, occupational or speech therapy; and shared certified registered nurse anesthesia. www.healthenterprises.org.
Challenge:
Health Enterprises Cooperative (HEc) is an Iowa-based cooperative focused solely on group purchasing activities. It has 29 independent acute care hopsital and 400-plus non-acute members. HEc’s number one goal is to help its members – most of which are small rural hospitals, and many of those critical access facilities – survive and prosper.
Solution:
HEc creates regional group purchasing programs to complement Premier healthcare alliance national programs. HEc emphasizes Premier’s broad contract portfolio as well as technology and tools to help members get the best value out of those contracts. In fact, the HEc board agreed that all its members adopt SpendAdvisor® MySpend™, Premier’s innovative spend management decision-support tool
Result:
Following are examples of how Premier has helped HEc members:
- In the first hour of MySpend training, an early-adopter hospital realized a $22,000 savings on a contract being used as a training example.
- Another hospital received a $34,000 refund because MySpend discovered that the hospital was paying tier 1 pricing even though the contracted supplier had authorized tier 3 pricing.
- A critical access hospital in northeast Iowa saved $45,000 by switching from the Mayo Clinical Laboratories to a Premier contracted laboratory.
- A newly recruited hospital saved 23.8 percent on food costs simply by switching to Premier’s food service program with U.S. Foodservice. Formerly, the hospital used a local distributor with no GPO contract protection.
- In 2009, 40 percent of the total $167 million in HEc spend was aggregated, resulting in members having considerably better tier pricing than they would have received had they purchased individually.
"My first thought was all the big wins with our Premier relationship, but
more important is what we do every day, using Premier programs. Excellence is
built on the basics, the everyday, routine things we do. Premier has become the
cornerstone of our success, not only our success at Health Enterprises, but the
success of our members as they use the programs to improve supply chain
performance. From the most basic elements of supply chain management to
leadership in healthcare reform, Premier is an amazing company"
Jeanie Brown, Vice President Health Enterprises Cooperative, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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