Premier initiative keeps focus on the bottom line
The Premier healthcare alliance has launched a new program designed to help hospitals and health systems control costs and increase profitability while also improving patient care.
Premier Consulting Solutions' (PCS) ProviderConnect uses an integrated approach of strategic planning, financial, clinical and operational performance and physician alignment solutions, officials said. It focuses on stakeholder alignment while following a change management process through comprehensive supply chain analysis, proven physician communication strategies and engagement, knowledge transfer and vendor accountability.
As a result, Premier officials say, healthcare providers can achieve a minimum 4:1 client return-on-investment and at least 15 percent improvement over their current cost position.
The alliance is made up of 2,200 U.S. hositals and 63,000 other healthcare sites.
"By offering access to a consolidated view of revenue, cost and quality benchmarks available at a moment's notice, PCS consultants can extrapolate a complete perspective of physician alignment challenges, build impactful plans and measure success over the long-term," said Wes Champion, vice president of PCS.
ProviderConnect offers providers access to Premier's Performance Improvement Portal, a library of performance improvement advice and best practices. The portal provides a networking community for knowledge sharing through interaction with industry specialists, hospital and health system peers and Premier knowledge experts.
Supported by industry and clinical experts, ProviderConnect uses data from Premier's Perspective database, a repository of clinical, financial and operational data, to help physicians provide quality care in a changing revenue and reimbursement landscape. Perspective houses patient level data from more than 700 hospitals, 45 million patient records and 210 million outpatient visits at hospitals.
"You must align incentives with physicians, so one goal was to ensure the physicians are on board with process changes," said Lynette Wheeler, a cardiac, vascular and pulmonary service leader at Heartland Health in St. Joseph, Mo., where PCS is involved in a three-year engagement. "We agreed we needed to get the hospital processes in order before we engaged the physicians."
Wheeler said Heartland used ProviderConnect in its redesign of the cath lab.
"We looked at the charge master and validated that we were capturing all charges," she said. "We looked at surgery. We looked at clinic processes and how they affected the Cath Lab and the inpatient areas. We looked at supplies."
Wait times caught the physicians' attention, she said. In the first month of implementing simple scheduling changes, she said, half the physicians cut wait times in half.
"Since one goal is improving patient satisfaction, this was a definite winner," Wheeler said.
"ProviderConnect stresses physician involvement from the beginning of the process, utilizing credible, comparative data reflective of actual activities and resources consumed across an episode of care," said Champion. "Our ability to offer this data, so necessary to engage physicians, is what truly drives change leading to quality and cost improvements."
ProviderConnect uses a mix of Premier technologies and solutions, including:
- SpendAdvisor, which analyzes total supply spending and identifies savings opportunities;
- QualityAdvisor, which allows users to benchmark with top performers and prioritize resource use and quality improvement efforts;
- OperationsAdvisor, which offers productivity monitoring, assessment and comparative data;
- SafetySurveillor, which improves infection prevention efforts and reduces costs associated with healthcare-associated infections (HAIs);
- ValueAdvisor, which tracks value analysis to clinically and financially return on investment; and
- Clinical focus tools, which provide price benchmarks on physician preference items, including implantable devices.
