Premier, Inc. First to Access Medicare Data for Innovation purposes

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Feb. 2, 2016) — Premier, Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC), a leading healthcare improvement company, has been approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to access its Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC) to develop innovations that drive healthcare transformation.

As the first organization to conduct Innovator Research using the VRDC, a virtual research environment, Premier will derive insights from privacy-protected Medicare data that are expected to result in the development of solutions to benefit patients and the healthcare system overall.

“Being approved to use the CMS VRDC signifies our leadership in creating innovative solutions to improve patient care,” said Wes Champion, senior vice president of Premier Performance Partners. “Access to the VRDC will allow Premier to calculate timelier performance measures than currently available and identify additional opportunity areas to help move healthcare performance improvement further, faster.”

CMS began accepting requests from innovators and entrepreneurs in September 2015 to conduct approved research that will ultimately improve care and provide better tools to benefit healthcare consumers. Previously, commercial entities were denied access to CMS data for these purposes.

As part of its approved research, Premier Insights, one of Premier’s research and analytics divisions, will seek to use additional data to identify interventions that drive quality improvement and cost containment. In doing so, Premier will analyze episodes of care across the continuum to determine clinical best practices that provide the greatest improvements in care and reductions in costs. Premier members will receive reports containing these benchmarks and findings to integrate into their care transformation efforts. Premier will then seek to determine whether these reports in addition to its other collaborative methodologies enable its members to outperform others.

Key findings from Premier’s research will be published to further assist providers nationally in their journey to better care. They will also form the basis for future measures and performance improvement solutions offered through Premier’s quality cycle management collaboratives, data analytics and consulting services.