Premier healthcare alliance supports aspects of Obama health plan

As the debate on health reform resumes Tuesday on Capitol Hill, the Premier healthcare alliance has added its endorsement to aspects of President Barack Obama's plan.

Susan DeVore, president and CEO of San Diego-based Premier, an alliance of more than 2,200 not-for-profit hospitals and health systems, wrote Obama last Friday offering support for his proposal and specific points of endorsement.

DeVore said Premier's experience operating a repository of hospital clinical and financial information with more than 700 participating hospitals and its healthcare purchasing networks puts the organization in a unique position to understand the challenges.

She said Premier supports aligning payment with quality and increasing the transparency in healthcare.

"Premier strongly supports policies that link payment to quality outcomes and urges you to include in healthcare reform a well-designed Medicare hospital value-based purchasing program that will reward quality and incentivize improved patient care," DeVore wrote.

The letter advised Obama to design a value-based purchasing incentive program for hospitals "designed to promote quality improvement rather than to guarantee government savings."

The government should share demonstrated Medicare savings from a value-based purchasing program with hospitals, she said, and provide technical assistance to lower-performing hospitals serving vulnerable populations or hospitals with limited financial resources.

Premier has also endorsed rewards for hospitals that reduce readmissions, the bundling of acute and post-acute payments and the development of voluntary accountable care organizations.

DeVore said Premier shares Obama's goal to ensure that patients are better informed on the quality and cost of their healthcare, and she urged the president to continue support for evidence-based medicine.

"We believe these reforms, if done right, will move us toward an efficient, outcomes-oriented and patient-centered healthcare delivery system," she said.

Premier has partnered with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration project and with the Food and Drug Administration on post-market surveillance of pharmaceuticals.