News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797

Premier healthcare alliance experts to present at national events in March

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (February 24, 2010) – Leaders from the Premier healthcare alliance will speak around the country in March sharing insights regarding accountable care organizations (ACOs), value-based purchasing (VBP) and health information technology (HIT), as well as improving quality while safely reducing costs.

Susan DeVore, Premier president and CEO, will speak at the 2010 Annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference & Exhibition on March 2 in Atlanta. She will discuss the key to data driven quality and how hospitals achieved savings in HIT by participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration™ (HQID) collaborative.

On March 8, DeVore will also speak at the 2010 National Pay for Performance Summit in San Francisco. Her topic of discussion will be "The Journey to High-Value Healthcare," and she will cover how pay-for-performance fits into healthcare legislation, as well as how ACOs are the future of healthcare. Richard Bankowitz, MD, MBA, FACP, Premier's enterprise-wide chief medical officer, and Carolyn Scott, R.N., M.ED., M.H.A., Premier vice president of Performance Improvement and Quality, will also participate in the Pay for Performance Summit during a pre-conference session on March 8. They will discuss key elements that have led to hospital successes in Premier's HQID and QUEST^®: High Performing Hospitals collaboratives.

Premier Purchasing Partners President Mike Alkire will discuss effective purchasing and supply chain management on March 4 at an Adventist Health System event in Park City, Utah.

On March 19, Gina Pugliese, RN, MS, vice president of the Premier Safety Institute^®, will speak at the Fifth Decennial International Conference on Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) in Atlanta. Pugliese will discuss Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Catholic Health Partners and Premier research showing that a video can be an effective tool for encouraging patients to remind healthcare staff to wash their hands. Results also show that the Hand Hygiene Saves Lives video may improve hand hygiene adherence in healthcare settings.

Dave Edwards, Premier vice president of Contract Uptake and Supplier Relations, will speak at the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses Annual Congress on March 16 in Denver. He will discuss Premier's QUEST Year 1 results, and tell how the implementation of Premier services and technologies can lead to improved quality and patient safety while helping hospitals achieve optimal outcomes in healthcare delivery.

On March 3, Premier Consulting Solutions Vice President, Sharon Conklin, will be a key speaker at ProcureCon Indirect in Charlotte, N.C., where she will discuss obtaining chief financial officer sign-off on hard and soft business results and savings.

Eric Kammer, Premier Informatics national director of operations; Scott Pope, Premier Informatics national director of SafetyConnect™; Diana Jackson, director of regulatory reporting, United Kingdom operations and training; and Leslie Schultz PhD, CPHQ, senior director of QUEST and knowledge transfer, will discuss how to build a business case for quality at the North Carolina Healthcare Financial Management Association Winter Institute on March 11 in Pinehurst, N.C.

QUEST is a voluntary, three-year project made up of approximately 200 hospitals across 31 states, including urban/rural, large/small and teaching/non-teaching facilities. Developed in partnership with Premier and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, QUEST is designed to springboard hospitals to new levels of performance and inform public policies with meaningful solutions, supported by real results. Hospitals are challenged to overcome the main factors that lead to deaths, errors and excessive costs, and measure themselves against one another to achieve top performance based on the following goals:

Save lives: Eliminate avoidable hospital mortalities;
Safely reduce the cost of care: Reduce the costs for each patient's hospitalization;
Deliver the most reliable and effective care: Ensure that patients receive every recommended evidence-based care measure;
Improve patient safety: Prevent incidents of harm in more than 30 categories, including healthcare-acquired infections and birth injuries;
Increase satisfaction: Improve the patient's overall care experience and loyalty to the care providing facility.

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.