Premier Inc. Releases the Five Strategic Elements of Care Delivery Optimization

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC), a leading healthcare improvement company, has released the five strategic elements of a healthcare culture that is centered on optimal care delivery in an evolving industry.

Premier’s new guidebook, Creating a Culture of Optimal Care Delivery, provides an industry-leading framework for health system leaders that can be used to achieve long-term hospital and health system performance improvement sustainability.

“Health systems are being challenged with shrinking budgets as they increasingly take on more risk and learn to operate in a new competitive environment,” said Kelly Conklin, MSN, RN, co-author and Vice President of Quality and Safety Advisory Services at Premier^®. “To thrive in today’s market, health systems need a focused, comprehensive organizational strategy to rein in costs, build new care delivery models and become the choice provider in their local markets. Stated simply, dollars follow investments in care delivery optimization.”

The guidebook was developed to help healthcare organizations deliver the most efficient, effective and caring healthcare experience to every patient, every time. Essential success factors include having the right data and analytics to analyze opportunities and continuously monitor and improve performance, engaging physicians in every care redesign project, following systemwide evidenced-based protocols with effective care management programs, keeping leadership and staff accountable, and ensuring every practice follows established high reliability standards.

“As healthcare organizations navigate the maze of federal regulations, the public and private sector transition to value-based care, and the new competitive environment, they are struggling to find practical solutions to improve quality and reduce costs,” said Erika Sundrud, MA, LSSMBB, co-author and Principal Performance Partner at Premier. “Through its collaboratives and other initiatives, Premier and its members have created a care delivery optimization framework that is essential for survival in today’s healthcare environment.”

Specifically, the guidebook recommends that healthcare organizations assess, identify, build and sustain performance improvement initiatives that align providers and optimize care delivery practices by:

1. Assessing organizational readiness and creating a strategic approach to achieving aims cost effectively.
2. Securing hospital-clinician alignment to achieve buy-in and engagement around a care transformation effort.
3. Transforming care processes across the continuum using evidence-based care pathways and multidisciplinary teams.
4. Managing patients across settings by aligning resources across pre- and post-acute services to promote whole-person care and avoid duplicative, unnecessary or high-cost services.
5. Ensuring high reliability across the continuum by regularly reassessing and hardwiring improvements into practice systematically, across all staff.

“Aligning these initiatives with clinicians is imperative for health systems seeking to improve efficiencies, avoid penalties and prepare themselves for payment models that reward collaboration,” said Andy Edeburn, MA, co-author and Principal Performance Partner at Premier. “Whether an organization has employed physicians, is partnering with independent physicians, or both, they must plan alongside each other so that the care transformation efforts are valuable to both parties.”

For more than 20 years, Premier, alongside some of the nation’s most advanced hospitals and health systems, has collected, tested and measured leading practices to improve outcomes and costs. This includes its QUEST^® quality improvement collaborative, where approximately 350 hospitals saved approximately $18 billion and 200,000 lives over nine years. Based on its years of industry experience and robust clinical, financial and operational analytics, Premier has established multiphased roadmaps for creating and implementing successful and sustainable care delivery practices.

“Over the years, Premier and its members have built a continuous performance improvement methodology that relies on data and collaboration to ensure that the best practice is the standard practice,” said Madeleine Biondolillo, MD, MBA, co-author and Vice President of Engagement and Delivery at Premier. “Best practices in this guidebook were documented from top-performing organizations and tested in national Premier collaboratives where members share data and outcomes to accelerate and sustain quality, efficiency, cost and safety innovations across their organizations. This framework is not theoretical; it is backed by science.”