[April 06, 2012]

Hospitals, Health Systems and Manufacturers Working Together to Improve Patient-Centered Care

The Premier healthcare alliance is working with hospitals, health systems and manufacturers to create performance improvement collaboratives that evaluate which clinical practices result in better outcomes while lowering costs.

The Performance Improvement Research Collaboratives (PIRCs) will consist of three to five provider organizations working to enhance their acute care delivery; as well as those who are building and implementing accountable care capabilities such as the organizations in Premier's Partnership for Care Transformation™ collaborative. These hospitals and health systems are working to eliminate waste, improve quality, and promote health and wellness across the continuum of care.

"All patients deserve the best care that can possibly be given. We're excited to share knowledge with other hospitals and to work with manufacturers to find better ways to provide care as healthcare providers across the country seek to improve outcomes," said John Bulger, DO, chief quality officer at Geisinger Health System.

The providers and Premier will work together with progressive manufacturers dedicated to improving quality and reducing costs across a wide range of critical disease states. The focus of the collaboratives is to help providers better understand, monitor, and deliver high-quality, patient-centered care.

"Key healthcare stakeholders are all experiencing the impact of healthcare industry change, and realizing that new business models are necessary to keep people safe, happy and alive while remaining competitive," said Wes Champion, senior vice president of Premier Prformance Partners. "These new programs allow manufacturers to formally engage with providers that are proactively seeking ways to improve patient care."

Specifically, provider organizations and manufacturers (whether or not on contract with Premier) will join with Premier Research Services™ (PRS) to participate in 18- to 24-month multifaceted PIRCs that ultimately seek to improve quality while simultaneously reducing the cost of care in disease state specific areas of focus.

Innovative manufacturers have already begun work on the initial PIRCs including Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc., an emerging specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the clinical and commercial development of new products that meet the needs of acute care practitioners and their patients.

The iterative steps of this process are worked through collaboratively by the hospital and health system, manufacturer, and PRS addressing the following:

• The burden of illness outcomes research: creating a call to action and establishing baseline metrics for performance in the disease state of interest.
• A predictive model designed to give providers of care a tool to readily pinpoint areas of opportunity.
• A disease state specific performance improvement program jointly designed by the manufacturer, key opinion leaders and Premier, which will be piloted in a small cohort of systems, then refined and scaled to the greater healthcare alliance.
• Monitoring disease state care improvement at a system level throughout the life of the collaborative.
• Engaging outside parties in the collaborative to validate and provide objectivity to the chosen metrics and elements of the performance improvement program.
• Widely disseminating the results to further expedite the real-world application of the outcomes into clinical practice.

To access more information on Premier's PIRCs, manufacturers please contact Todd Gorsuch (207.899.1300) and healthcare providers can inquire at www.premierinc.com/research.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 81,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by hospitals, health systems and other providers, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier has worked with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has an office in Washington. https://premierinc.com. Stay connected with Premier on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

[ Back To SIP Trunking Home's Homepage ]