News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Alven Weil
Premier Inc.
704.733.5797

Premier healthcare alliance recognizes nation’s top hospitals for achieving superior supply expense performance

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (June 18, 2008) – The Premier healthcare alliance’s Purchasing Partners division last week recognized 18 alliance members as winners of its second annual Supply Chain Excellence Award. Premier honored the winners – selected from its more than 2,000 eligible hospitals nationwide – at the 2008 Premier Annual Breakthroughs Conference & Exhibition in Nashville, Tenn.

Premier’s Supply Chain Excellence Award is given to the nation’s top hospitals achieving superior supply expense performance as measured by Premier’s recently upgraded SupplyFocusTM, the industry’s largest comparative database of operational and supply chain cost information for acute care hospitals. Winners were identified using four industry standard supply expense ratios and a case-mix-index-based peer grouping methodology to ensure that organizations of diverse sizes and complexity were considered equally.

“Achieving and sustaining strong supply chain performance is essential to a healthy bottom line, which ensures that the health needs of our community are met,” said Premier Purchasing Partners President Mike Alkire. “We are pleased to recognize the significant accomplishments of our Supply Chain Excellence Award winners.”

To be eligible, each organization had to submit four quarters of calendar 2007 data to SupplyFocus by April 30, 2008. With 40 indicators measuring and trending performance in cost and operations, SupplyFocus enables hospitals to compare supply expense performance to that of similar facilities and easily identify improvement opportunities.

2008 Supply Chain Excellence winners are:
Adventist GlenOaks Hospital – Glendale Heights, Ill.
Akron City Hospital – Akron, Ohio
Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital – Rocky Mount, Va.
Carilion Giles Memorial Hospital – Pearisburg, Va.
Carilion Clinic – Roanoke, Va.
Community Health Partners – Lorain, Ohio
Community United Methodist – Henderson, Ky.
Henry Ford Health System – Detroit
Henry Ford Hospital – Detroit
Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital – Wyandotte, Mich.
Marcum & Wallace Memorial Hospital – Irvine, Ky.
Mercy Memorial Hospital – Urbana, Ohio
Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center – Chicago
Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital – Albuquerque, N.M.
Randolph Hospital – Asheboro, N.C.
Saint Francis Hospital – Evanston, Ill.
Sinai - Grace Hospital – Detroit
Summa Health System – Akron, Ohio

For more information, please visit: www.premierinc.com/about/news/awards/sc-performance-awards/index.jsp.

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.