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CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797

Premier healthcare alliance announces new collaborative to drive rapid supply chain improvements for participating members

ASCEND™ – Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor – targets best practices to reduce cost of care while enhancing quality

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (June 25, 2008) — The Premier healthcare alliance today announced a new collaborative to help participating members achieve rapid improvements in supply chain performance and efficiency.

ASCEND – Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor – is a pioneering full-service solutions approach to improving the supply chain that extends Premier’s vision to work with its members to transform healthcare together. The process of signing up participants has already begun.

“ASCEND is an exciting breakthrough in supply chain management,” said Premier Purchasing Partners President Mike Alkire. “It draws on conventional economic levers such as volume and standardization, but goes far beyond by focusing on metrics that hospital financial officers use to gauge performance, namely supply costs per adjusted discharge.

“It will feature many of the successful constructs and approaches in Premier's groundbreaking pay for performance project with CMS and our current QUEST program,” Alkire said, “including the formation of like-minded ‘cohorts’ that will share data among members of this self-selected subset of Premier's membership. We will seek to identify and replicate best practices in purchasing. Participating hospitals will have the involvement by the C-suites to support rapid adoption of the change concepts pioneered in the program.”

ASCEND participants will benefit from:

Group purchasing programs specifically negotiated for ASCEND participants;
Benchmarking metrics to assist in determining additional supply chain and operational cost savings opportunities; and
Knowledge sharing with other participants and industry experts.

ASCEND participants will drive lower prices, reduce total cost of care without sacrificing quality, and create ongoing benchmarks and metrics to ensure continuing progress,” said Alkire. “And these benefits will happen quickly because of the transformational nature of the processes we will use.”

For more information about ASCEND, go to www.premierinc.com/ASCEND.

About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Serving more than 2,000 U.S. hospitals and 53,000-plus 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 & 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.