Sixth Annual Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Award
The Kentucky
Physicians Care Network
Louisville, KY
San Diego, CA -- The Kentucky Physicians Care Network, Louisville, KY, is the winner of the Sixth Annual Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Award. Premier, one of the nation’s top healthcare alliances, recently announced its Cares Award winner and runners-up during its Governance Education Conference held February 5-7 in Orlando. More than 800 healthcare executives, trustees, medical leaders, and invited guests attended.
The Cares Award spotlights replicable programs to help the medically underserved and focuses attention on the need to support such locally based efforts. It carries with it an annual cash award of $50,000 to the winner and $120,000 to be divided among five runners-up. Two hundred nineteen nominations for the award were received from healthcare organizations across the country.
Beginning with the Kentucky Physicians Care Network, health providers organized a statewide private initiative through which healthcare professionals voluntarily contribute services to uninsured Kentucky residents. A toll-free hotline is used to assign patients to a provider. The program has grown to include physicians, hospitals, dentists, pharmaceutical companies, home health agencies, and hospices. The essence of the initiative, known locally as Health Kentucky, Inc., is to provide a safety net of access to quality healthcare for every uninsured Kentucky resident. Since its inception, 186,238 have qualified for care.
Primary funding for the Cares Award was provided by Premier with additional funding coming from C. R. Bard, Inc., Glaxo Wellcome, Becton-Dickinson, Merck & Company, Johnson & Johnson, 3M Healthcare, Mallinckrodt, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Standard Textile and Standard Register.
"Grassroots community action is what the Cares Award is all about," said Robert W. O’Leary, Premier’s chairman and chief executive officer. "It recognizes innovative local efforts to help the medically underserved among us Ñ and underscores the importance of supporting these deserving efforts."
The recipients of the awards were chosen by a panel of national leaders selected from business, academe, labor, medicine, public health and consumer interests. The award is named after Monroe E. Trout, M.D., chairman from 1986-1994 of American Healthcare Systems (AmHS), a predecessor organization to today’s Premier.
Premier, Inc., represents 230 owners and the 800 hospitals and healthcare facilities they operate, and approximately 900 other affiliated hospital and healthcare organizations. Premier maintains major offices in Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; San Diego, CA; and Washington, DC.
Premier’s owners include some of the nation’s largest and best-known not-for-profit hospital and healthcare systems and referral centers as well as strong community hospitals, generally mirroring the composition of the hospital/health system industry in the United States. In addition to using Premier as a vehicle for joint ventures like group purchasing that yield economies of scale and share R & D and operating risks, Premier’s owners and affiliates use the alliance to transfer best practices, share experience to support performance improvements, and support new and emerging healthcare technologies.