News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797

Premier healthcare alliance enhances value analysis program to help hospitals better connect employees, improve quality, reduce costs

ValueConnect, to be demonstrated at AHRMM10, uses Premier data and resources to align supply chain, finance and clinical teams, engage hospitals around effectively evaluating product and treatment options

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (July 28, 2010) – To help hospitals effectively evaluate product and treatment options that help improve the quality and safety of care while reducing costs, the Premier healthcare alliance has enhanced ValueConnect™, its value analysis program.

ValueConnect, a performance improvement program engineered with healthcare reform in mind, offers Premier's 2,300 hospital members the opportunity to standardize an approach to value analysis across the entire alliance. It supports the value analysis process through automated workflow management, tracking and measuring results, peer-to-peer collaboration and knowledge sharing. Enhancements to the program include the ability to create custom assessment forms for organization-specific data management and advanced features to support an efficient committee process.

"When hospitals are challenged to take costs out of the system, a streamlined value analysis process is crucial to balancing clinical attributes, quality outcomes and appropriate usage with the best financial scenario specific to an organization," said Bill Marquardt, Premier vice president of product development and adoption.

Additionally, Premier will demonstrate how ValueConnect helps hospitals balance the challenges associated with reducing costs and increasing efficiency at the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) 2010 Annual Conference and Exhibition. Premier experts will be available in booth 901 for open discussion and to address questions.

Premier alliance member experts from University Hospitals in Cleveland will also speak at the conference on Monday, August 2 about how they engaged all key stakeholders to drive a systematic and organized value analysis culture.

Also featured at the Premier booth will be insights on:

How to assess value analysis against best practice.
Premier's ASCEND^® (Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor) program and how members manage an efficient supply chain and have saved more than $23 million since May 2009.
Controlling costs and capturing revenue with Premier's PharmacyConnect™.
Achieving accurate reimbursement while enhancing revenue cycle operating efficiencies, compliance and integrity with Premier's RevenueConnect™.

ValueAdvisor^®, the cornerstone of ValueConnect, is a Web-based application that offers hospitals an automated solution to manage their value analysis processes, and realize clinical and financial return on investment. Product functionality is geared toward the management of requests, access to comprehensive information to support evaluations, and goal-oriented measurement of results.

A vital component to the ValueConnect program is the availability of value analysis experts. ValueConnect includes an array of consulting support ranging from a value analysis assessment to more transformational services. As part of the ValueAdvisor implementation, Premier consulting experts conduct an assessment to provide guidance on the cultural and process infrastructure that is critical to achieving best practice value analysis.

ValueConnect allows hospitals to collaborate and share knowledge building on the findings from Premier collaboratives such as the ASCEND program to identify and implement supply chain performance opportunities, and the QUEST^®: High Performing Hospitals collaborative to drive hospitals to new levels of performance and inform public policies with meaningful solutions, supported by real results.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,400 U.S. hospitals and nearly 70,000 other healthcare sites working together to achieve high quality, cost-effective care. 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. http://www.premierinc.com