News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797
Premier healthcare alliance experts to present at conferences around the world in May
Discussions to include supply chain transparency, value-based purchasing through national pay-for-performance project
with CMS
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (May 6, 2008) – Leaders from the Premier healthcare alliance will speak around the world in May, sharing insights regarding healthcare supply chain pricing and transparency, healthcare issues in this year's presidential election, and pay-for-performance (P4P) based on Premier's Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Premier President and CEO Richard Norling will be a featured speaker at the Hospital Authority Convention May 6 in Hong Kong, China. Norling will discuss strategic purchasing of payment to providers to incentivize performance and quality improvements.
Blair Childs, senior vice president of Public Affairs, will discuss issues and implications of concern to healthcare professionals during this election year at PNC's 2008 Annual Healthcare Symposium May 9 in Baltimore. Childs will also present this subject as a featured speaker at the North Carolina Association of Healthcare Resource and Materials Management Spring Educational Conference on May 20 in Wilmington, N.C.
Additionally, Childs will address P4P as a part of an audio conference on May 29 at 1:30 p.m. ET. The event will cover Medicare reimbursement, looking at details and insights into CMS' hospital value-based purchasing program. To register, please visit: www.healthresourcesonline.com/edu/medicarevbp.htm.
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, then uses the data to identify and reward top performers in five clinical areas. Third-year results from the project will be released this June. 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.