Premier Inc

Source: Healthcare Digital

Date :07/01/2008 04:21:12

COO Susan DeVore explains how the Premier healthcare alliance is transforming healthcare

Written by Roxanne Ridge and Produced by Kate Bridgman

Premier Inc. is the largest healthcare alliance in the USA dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Serving more than 1,700 hospitals and 49,000 other healthcare sites, Premier is owned by 200 not-for-profit hospitals across the country.

Whether Premier owners, members or clients, these organizations have access to Premier’s robust clinical and supply databases and can share their expertise with each other. They unite to negotiate reduced prices for products and technologies that can be used in providing safe, high-quality, cost-effective care. Through this shared approach, Premier accelerates access to beneficial innovations and reduces the cost of technology and supplies through group purchasing.

Leading the way

“What attracted me to Premier was its mission,” says Premier Chief Operating Officer (COO) Susan DeVore, who joined the company four years ago as the President of Premier Purchasing Partners, LP. She led the purchasing division to its position as the leading GPO in the industry with more than 1,500 members and nearly $31 billion in projected annual purchasing volume in 2008.

DeVore came to the company after more than 20 years with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGEY), where she was a senior health care industry management practice leader and member of the executive committee for the North American consulting organization.

She’s been named on Modern Healthcare’s list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare and on the magazine’s list of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare. She was also the recipient of the 2007 Top 25 Women in Business by the Charlotte Business Journal.

“Premier has an important mission. We have years of clinical, operational and supply chain data and have tested models for healthcare, which have been proven to work. We continue to drive our goals of improving the health of communities,” she explains.

Last year, DeVore was promoted to Premier’s COO, a position that includes operations of its four business units: Purchasing Partners, Healthcare Informatics, Premier Consulting Solutions and Premier Insurance Management Services. Since becoming COO, the company has experienced double digit growth.

Making a difference

“The solution to many of the U.S. healthcare system’s challenges may be to simply work together,” continues DeVore. “We aim to transform the healthcare system from the inside and help those in government making the reforms on the outside.” Premier believes that hospitals should be paid based on their performance. And it’s evident that they work hard to put vision into practice.

“We’re constantly faced with political and governmental opportunities, and we have to quickly adapt and apply what we learn locally to the hospitals involved in our alliance,” DeVore says. “We also have to communicate our vision to consumers who may not understand the industry’s complex structure.

“Premier is quick to adapt. Our alliance essentially unites the industry, creates new solutions, tests them and then, through the alliance, gives them scale. By doing this we hope to make even bigger changes for the betterment of healthcare in the future.”

Premier’s quest

There’s no doubt that the U.S. healthcare system is a hotly debated topic.

Changing American lifestyles means changing demographics, and the system has to act fast.

“There’s not enough money to fund our healthcare system at the current spending levels,” adds DeVore. “Both employers and consumers are feeling the strain associated with rising medical costs; thus, everything that Premier does is with the future in mind. This largely comes down to the power of our industry-leading operational and clinical data bases and our ability to apply our cutting-edge technology solutions to systemic problems that inhibit the safe, efficient and cost-effective delivery of healthcare to the communities our members serve.”

This is clearly the case when you look at Premier’s latest project, ‘QUEST: High Performing Hospitals.’ QUEST, in conjunction with more than 150 hospitals, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and other healthcare leaders, is a comprehensive program to improve patient safety and quality while safely reducing healthcare costs.

Premier has learned through its Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that pay for performance (P4P) is effective in stimulating quality and safety improvement. QUEST will build on this successful P4P experience and measure participating hospitals’ performance on clearly defined measures encompassing aspects of quality, efficiency, safety and patient satisfaction. Premier then will analyze the data, facilitate sharing of best practices, and provide incentives for top-performing hospitals.

“Premier’s ultimate goal is to partner with hospitals and healthcare systems to help them consistently and reliably deliver the best patient experience and service with the optimal clinical and financial outcome for each patient,” explains DeVore.

A full package

Premier continues to enhance its services by attacking problems that bedevil the U.S. healthcare industry. The company has developed a groundbreaking spend management decision support tool – SpendAdvisor – to help health systems reduce supply chain expenses to the benefit of patients and communities. SpendAdvisor provides a mechanism through which supply expenses can be aggregated, standardized, and analyzed to identify every possible savings opportunity.

With its 2006 acquisition of Cereplex, Premier has developed SafetySurveillorTM, a web-based tool hospitals can use to detect and alert staff of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). It works to protect patients by continuously tracking HAIs and antibiotic use to monitor prevention and control activities. The system helps hospitals meet state-mandated public reporting of certain HAIs, including screening for MRSA – one of the most common and harmful infections found in hospitals today.

In 2007, Premier acquired CareScience from Quovadx, Inc., bringing together two of the nation’s leading organizations working with hospitals to improve healthcare clinical quality and efficiency.

Best practice

Premier won the prestigious 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award – further evidence that the company’s approach to business really works.

Another key to Premier’s success is the values-based approach to business and adherence to the strongest code of conduct in the healthcare group purchasing industry. More than 1,000 people work for the company, and Premier puts a premium on company-provided training programs. Premier also offers tuition reimbursement for graduate education.

Premier stands out in the way it is applying its expertise internationally. At the end of 2007, Premier teamed up with the UK’s National Health Service in the northwest of Britain to oversee a project that will apply Premier’s successful pay for performance model.

“Premier is the whole package,” says DeVore. “We combine clinical, operational and supply chain data, advocacy and healthcare expertise. The key is to focus on working together to make world healthcare better.”