News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797
Premier healthcare alliance experts to present at national events
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (November 11, 2009) – Leaders from the Premier healthcare alliance will speak around the country in November and December, sharing insights regarding Premier's QUEST®: High Performing Hospitals program, Premier's Performance Improvement (PI) Portal™ and improving quality while safely reducing costs.
Premier's President and CEO Susan DeVore and Richard Bankowitz, Premier chief medical officer, will present at the 2009 Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Conference on December 8 in Orlando, Fla. They will discuss Premier's QUEST program, a three-year national collaborative of approximately 200 hospitals focused on accelerating improvement across important dimensions of hospital performance (quality, cost, outcomes, harm and satisfaction).
Joining Premier in this presentation will be executives from two QUEST charter member organizations: Charleston Area Medical Center of Charleston, W.Va., and Alegent Health Bergan Mercy Medical Center of Omaha, Neb. They will discuss how they have consistently placed among the top performers in the project through its first two years.
Approximately 200 hospitals representing 31 states are now participating in this project, which is currently linking the two main goals of health reform proposals being considered by Congress: quality improvement and cost reduction.
Results from the first year of the project released on October 21 show that the original 157 QUEST hospitals have saved an estimated total of 8,043 lives and $577 million in one year. Of the approximately 2.3 million patients treated annually in these hospitals, 24,818 additional patients received treatments that met the highest quality patient care standards when compared to baseline performance at the outset of the project.
According to a Premier analysis of these Year 1 results, if non-participating hospitals were able to achieve the improvements found among the QUEST participants, they could save an estimated additional 52,760 lives.
Additionally, Dave Edwards, Premier vice president of Contract Uptake and Supplier Relations will also discuss QUEST at the Association of National Account Executives O.R. Reverse Tradeshow and Conference on November 11 in Las Vegas.
On November 17, Leslie Schultz, senior director of Informatics, will speak at Information Today's KMWorld 2009 meeting in San Jose, Calif. Schultz will discuss Premier's PI Portal during an Enterprise 2.0 session. Schultz and Lisa Leonard, vice president and co-founder of Street Smarts, the technology platform supporting the PI Portal, will discuss how Premier achieves its mission "to analyze and share knowledge nationwide to improve the health of communities" through use of the PI Portal. A key enabler for knowledge transfer and asynchronous collaboration/networking, the PI Portal supports QUEST, the United Kingdom National Health Service North West Advancing Quality Project and the South Carolina Healthcare Quality Trust, among other programs and initiatives.
About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
The Premier healthcare alliance is more
than 2,300 U.S. hospitals and 64,000-plus other healthcare sites working
together to improve healthcare quality and affordability. Owned by
not-for-profit hospitals, 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 works 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 offices
in San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington. Follow Premier on
Twitter.