News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797
Premier healthcare alliance experts to present at national events in April
Discussions to include supply chain transparency, value-based purchasing through national pay-for-performance project with CMS
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (April 1, 2008) – Leaders from the Premier healthcare alliance will speak around the country in April, sharing insights regarding healthcare supply chain pricing and transparency and patient safety, as well as pay-for-performance (P4P) based on Premier’s Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS.
Premier President and CEO Richard Norling will be a featured speaker at the Hospital Association of Southern California Annual Meeting April 18 in Dana Point, Calif. Norling will lead a general session, discussing the “Business Case for Quality in Healthcare.”
Susan DeVore, Premier’s chief operating officer, will discuss “Progress toward Value-Based Purchasing for Physicians and Hospitals” as a featured speaker at the 5th Annual World Health Care Congress April 21 in Washington, D.C.
Premier’s Kelli Price, vice president, Organizational Engagement & Performance Excellence, will focus on “Using Core Values to Drive an Organization” at the 20th Annual Quest for Excellence, the official conference of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, on April 22 in Washington, D.C. A 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Premier will also honor alliance member Sharp HealthCare, which won the award in 2007.
Dave Edwards, vice president of Supplier Relations and Business Development, will discuss “Credentialing Tools for Collaboration and Control” April 29 at the 2008 Healthcare Supplier/Provider Institute Meeting in Dallas.
The HQID is the first national project of its kind, designed to determine
if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the quality
of inpatient care. As part of the project, more than 250 hospitals submit
clinical quality data to Premier through the Perspective™ data warehouse.
CMS, which approved a three-year extension of the project in February, then
uses the data to identify and reward top performers in five clinical areas.
Third-year results from the project will be released this May. HQID served
as a guideline for CMS’ recent value-based purchasing proposal to Congress,
and Norling recently participated in a Senate Finance Committee Roundtable
on the topic.
According to a January analysis of the HQID project, if all hospitals
nationally were to achieve the three-year cost and mortality improvements
found in HQID, they could save an estimated 70,000 lives per year and reduce
hospital costs by more than $4.5 billion annually. In addition, NHS North
West, England’s largest strategic health authority, is instituting the
country’s first hospital-based pay-for-performance effort, called “Advancing
Quality,” using the HQID project as a guideline.
Premier recently launched “QUEST: High Performing Hospitals” based on many
of the same principles used in the HQID project. The goal of QUEST is to
improve patient safety and quality in the nation’s hospitals while safely
reducing healthcare costs. QUEST participating hospitals report data to
Premier on a set of clearly defined performance measures encompassing
aspects of quality, efficiency, safety and patient satisfaction. Premier
analyzes the data, facilitates sharing of best practices, and provides
incentives for top-performing hospitals.
About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Serving more than 2,000 U.S. hospitals and nearly 50,000 other healthcare
sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming
healthcare together. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates one of
the leading healthcare purchasing networks and the nation's most comprehensive
repository of hospital clinical and financial information. A subsidiary operates
one of the nation's largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability
risk-retention groups. A world leader in helping healthcare providers deliver
dramatic improvements in care, Premier is working with the United Kingdom's
National Health Service North West and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in San Diego, Premier
has offices in Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia, and Washington. For more
information, visit www.premierinc.com.