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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797

Premier healthcare alliance achieves record growth, helps members save more than $780 million in 2008

Launches collaborative projects to help members improve quality of patient care, safely reduce hospital costs

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (May 12, 2009) – The Premier healthcare alliance generated record validated member savings of more than $780 million in its fiscal 2008, while the alliance grew to more than 2,100 not-for-profit hospitals and 55,000+ other healthcare sites, such as surgery centers and long-term care facilities.

Overall, Premier experienced record growth across its operations committed to enhancing hospital financial, operational and clinical performance improvement, as well as managing risk. The alliance also launched collaboratives dedicated to assisting its alliance members in improving quality of care while safely reducing hospital costs.

"Considering the struggles that not-for-profit hospitals are facing in this economy, Premier's ability to help us improve both the quality of care we offer our patients and our bottom line is invaluable," said Premier Board Chair Lowell C. Kruse, president and CEO of Heartland Health in St. Joseph, Mo. "These savings are what hospitals save in real dollars as a result of their collaboration through the Premier alliance, savings that can be reinvested to improve the health of the communities we serve."

According to Premier's incoming President and CEO Susan DeVore, "As an alliance of more than 2,100 hospitals working to improve the quality and affordability of healthcare, Premier exists to ensure our members are able to enhance the health of their communities. We are able to achieve this because of our members – through the quality and cost improvement collaboratives in which they participate and their utilization of the group purchasing contracts we negotiate on their behalf."

Supply chain efficiency
Premier's supply chain efficiency efforts with members returned a record $258 million in cash distributions to its owner not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare systems in its fiscal 2008. Premier distributions of total group purchasing organization (GPO) revenue are higher than those of other GPOs, and Premier has already distributed a record $112 million for the first six months of FY 2009.

Premier launched projects focusing on supply chain efficiencies, including:

Clinical, quality and operational improvement
Premier continued to collaborate with alliance members on both national and regional levels through projects aimed at improving quality while reducing costs.

Premier announced that it will expand participation in the QUEST: High Performing Hospitals program. QUEST uses benchmarked data from Premier and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement that identifies the main factors leading to deaths, errors and excessive costs. With this information, hospitals are able to share best practices and systematically initiate efforts proven to improve quality and patient outcomes. QUEST performance improvement targets include delivering the most reliable and effective patient care; safely reducing the cost of care; saving lives; improving patient safety, including the prevention of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs); and increasing patient satisfaction.

More than 1.1 million patients treated in the Premier, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration™ (HQID) pay-for-performance project are living longer and receiving recommended treatments more frequently. Participating hospitals raised overall quality by an average of 15.8 percent over three years based on their delivery of 30 nationally standardized and widely accepted care measures to patients in five clinical areas.

Health Sciences South Carolina, the South Carolina Hospital Association and the Premier healthcare alliance announced the formation of the South Carolina Healthcare Quality Trust, a voluntary partnership aimed at eliminating preventable HAIs.

SafetySurveillor™, Premier's real-time application to prevent HAIs and optimize antibiotic use, continued to experience rapid growth. Hundreds of hospitals have chosen SafetySurveillor to enhance patient care, making it one of the most widely adopted infection control solutions during the past year.

Forty hospitals have joined Premier's LaborConnect™ labor management program since July 1, 2008. These organizations will implement Premier's OperationsAdvisor™ labor management solution to improve financial and operational performance, a focus of particular importance during the challenging economic environment. OperationsAdvisor assists hospitals with internal productivity monitoring on a routine basis, and comparative benchmarking data to identify attainable performance improvement opportunities.

Premier Research Services contributed to more than 30 scientific journal articles on topics regarding quality improvement, including the areas of venous thromboembolism, cardiovascular disease and infectious diseases.

Premier Consulting Solutions
Premier Consulting Solutions (PCS) added more than 60 new customers, along with 225 new customer engagements, throughout 2008. PCS launched the Premier Perinatal Safety Initiative, a 21-month national collaborative designed to achieve the consistent delivery of evidence-based care with the goal of eliminating preventable birth-related injuries and deaths. Premier is currently recruiting participants for a second Perinatal Safety Initiative.

Premier Insurance Management Services, Inc.
Premier Insurance Management Services, Inc.™ (PIMS), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Premier healthcare alliance, returned more than $1,150,000 in experience credit payments to 86 hospitals and healthcare systems participating in its Excess Workers' Compensation and Fidelity/Fiduciary sponsored insurance programs. PIMS also produced $3.2 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.

Two new sponsored insurance programs were created: Data privacy and network risk liability insurance product offering protection in the fast growing area of sophisticated cyber liability risk; and Primary Professional Liability, providing medical malpractice coverage for rural and mid-sized hospitals.

PIMS manages American Excess Insurance Exchange, RRG (AEIX), with $340 million in assets providing excess professional liability insurance to members. PIMS achieved a 100 percent policyholder renewal, a 100 percent customer satisfaction score, and a reduction of approximately 5 percent for renewal pricing on approximately $39 million in premium in CY 2008.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 80,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by hospitals, health systems and other providers, 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 has worked 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 an office in Washington. https://premierinc.com. Stay connected with Premier on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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