Premier Inc. Predictive Technology Helps Prepare for Resumption of Elective Procedures by Identifying Surges in COVID-19 Cases and Supply Needs

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Premier Inc., a leading healthcare improvement company, is leveraging its technology solutions to help hospitals and health systems across the country anticipate surges in COVID-19 along with the implications for supplies, including personal protective equipment (PPE), therapeutics and blood needed by the providers. This technology is critical to managing patient care needs and supply inventory now and during any potential future surges, all while ramping up a return of elective procedures.

Premier’s model-based tool aggregates clinical and supply chain data and applies the insights to individual hospitals, offering near real-time information to guide decision-makers’ preparations for surges in bed and supply capacity.

“The outbreak of COVID-19 has created new stresses and challenges in the supply chain that have created a new reality in caring for patients,” said Premier President Michael J. Alkire. “From caring for sick patients now to serving as the early warning mechanism at the first signs of a resurgence, every hospital and health system needs supplies to manage their populations. Premier is proud to offer a predictive tool that provides unparalleled insights on patient and supply demand due to COVID-19 today, while managing for potential future surges as organizations seek to return to normal.”

Fueled by national and local sources of data, Premier’s technology enables providers to plan for a return to elective procedures, as well as caring for COVID-19 patients, by predicting a potential COVID-19 surge in a specific locality and forecast the disease’s progression. By helping to predict where COVID-19 cases will increase – down to the county and facility level – Premier technology allows health systems to clinically prepare and drill into supply chain data to find suppliers that can fill their needs. Critical to a successful return to elective procedures, predictive analytics are customized for each facility, indicating the health systems’ potential bed and supply utilization more than two weeks in advance.

“As a country we experienced the shock of not being adequately prepared during the initial outbreak of COVID-19,” Alkire added. “There was a struggle to manage surge capacity and the burn rates of PPE. We developed this tool to ensure that this doesn’t happen again – in the event of subsequent waves of COVID-19, or a future pandemic.”

Premier’s supply chain forecasting solution helps providers anticipate their PPE needs, along with other equipment necessary for treating patients. Premier uses its comprehensive, vendor-agnostic supply data to develop a supply allocation model that predicts the number of disease cases across a seven-day period by county and models the supply levels a healthcare provider will need based on estimated case volume and typical surge demand.

This tool leverages PremierConnect^®, Premier’s cloud-based performance improvement platform, to aggregate, standardize and analyze spend and utilization data for full visibility into systemwide cost savings opportunities, and is currently available to all Premier members at no cost as part of Premier’s differentiated solutions to the challenges healthcare providers face.