Premier Healthcare Alliance Experts To Present At Conferences Around The World In July

Main Category: Conferences
Article Date: 14 Jul 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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Leaders from the Premier healthcare alliance will speak around the world in July, sharing insights regarding patient safety, efficient supply chain expenditures and pay-for-performance (P4P) based on Premier's Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Premier President and CEO Richard Norling will be a featured speaker at the 28th annual HFMA US/UK Exchange on July 23 in Toronto. Norling will discuss Year 3 results from the HQID project, as well as the United Kingdom's NHS North West's "Advancing Quality" P4P project, which uses the HQID project as a guideline.

Susan DeVore, Premier's chief operating officer, will discuss the HQID project as a featured speaker at the 16th Annual Health Forum and American Hospital Association Leadership Summit July 26 in San Diego.

Stephanie Alexander, Premier's senior vice president of Healthcare Informatics, will discuss the HQID project at the Integrated Healthcare Association Board Meeting on July 17 in Oakland, Calif.

Blair Childs, Premier's senior vice president of Public Affairs, will discuss P4P and the HQID project on July 14, and Gina Pugliese, RN, MS, vice president of the Premier Safety Institute, will discuss patient safety on July 16. Both presentations will be held at The Georgetown University Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C.

Joe Pleasant, FHIMSS, Premier senior vice president and chief information officer, will discuss patient safety, quality and cost reduction related to an efficient hospital supply chain as a featured speaker at the 46th Annual Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management Conference and Exhibition on July 22 in San Antonio.

Keith Ferguson, Premier Consulting Solutions principal, will discuss "The Role of Materials Management in Service Line Profitability" at the Maryland Society of Healthcare Materials Management on July 11 in Baltimore.

Vicki Petersen, MS, RT(R), FAHRA, director of Premier Consulting Solutions, will discuss enabling technologies driving change in imaging and communications at the Association for Medical Imaging Management (AHRA) 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Denver on July 30.

The HQID project is the first national project of its kind, designed to determine if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the quality of inpatient care. As part of the project, more than 250 hospitals submit clinical quality data to Premier through the Perspective™ data warehouse. CMS, which approved a three-year extension of the project, then uses the data to identify and reward top performers in five clinical areas.

According to a January analysis of the HQID project, if all hospitals nationally were to achieve the three-year cost and mortality improvements found in HQID, they could save an estimated 70,000 lives per year and reduce hospital costs by more than $4.5 billion annually. In addition, NHS North West, England's largest strategic health authority, is instituting the country's first hospital-based pay-for-performance effort, called "Advancing Quality," using the HQID project as a guideline.

Premier recently launched "QUEST: High Performing Hospitals" based on many of the same principles used in the HQID project. The goal of QUEST is to improve patient safety and quality in the nation's hospitals while safely reducing healthcare costs. QUEST participating hospitals report data to Premier on a set of clearly defined performance measures encompassing aspects of quality, efficiency, safety and patient satisfaction. Premier analyzes the data, facilitates sharing of best practices, and provides incentives for top-performing hospitals.

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.

Premier Inc.,