Since joining the Premier healthcare alliance last year, Edward Hospital & Health Services has saved $3.5 million while improving clinical quality and patient safety.
Based in Naperville, Ill., Edward Hospital works with the alliance’s more than 2,500 providers to deliver highly efficient healthcare. They do so by using Premier’s technology and collaborative services, as well as its national purchasing network.
Premier has helped Edward Hospital identify nearly $6.2 million in savings – 250 percent of their one-year goal. Additionally, they worked with Premier field specialists to:
- Save nearly $1.13 million on exact-match med-surg and pharmacy contracts;
- Identify $970,000 in savings by standardizing and converting purchasing practices through Premier’s ASCEND (Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor) program;
- Ensure efficient distribution resulting in $469,000 in savings annually; and
- Renegotiate food service contracts to reduce management fees and move food distribution to Premier’s contracted supplier, US Foods, for a savings of more than $500,000.
Accessing severity-adjusted comparative data from Premier, Edward Hospital will also save more than $390,000 annually by eliminating off-label use of bone morphogenic proteins. The data allows them to benchmark and compare performance with top hospitals nationwide to more effectively use resources.
“We believed that by partnering with Premier we would be able to gain not only better product pricing due to their scale in the industry, but also leverage their industry experience with some of the most prominent healthcare providers in the U.S. to allow us to better serve our community and provide world class healthcare at the most affordable rate,” said Vince Pryor, CFO at Edward Hospital. “Premier’s value equation that focuses on cost and quality truly aligned with our strategy of providing access, efficiency and quality to our community and the patients we serve.”
Edward Hospital will continue its performance improvement efforts by using PhysicianFocus, an InformationWeek 500 technology that links physicians and hospitals across different practices and specialties to integrate care delivery.
In addition, they serve as a development partner for PhysicianFocus Ambulatory, a new product measuring quality outcomes through physician practice data to better understand the relationship between patient populations, outcomes, care and finances. PhysicianFocus Ambulatory supports clinical integration models, bringing together hospitals and physicians across different practices and specialties to improve patient-centered care.
“In a time of declining reimbursement and higher scrutiny on quality, we felt it was essential to be aligned with a partner like Premier that has created an alliance with the best institutions in the country for the sole purpose of improving the value of healthcare,” said Pryor.
Edward Hospital became an owner of the alliance to significantly reduce costs and identify opportunities for quality and safety improvement using Premier products, services and programs, including:
- Regional and national purchasing collaboratives, like ASCEND, which has helped hospitals save $56+ million by aggregating, monitoring and analyzing supply chain data to improve performance;
- SpendAdvisor® MySpend™ data to analyze supply spend and compare it with like organizations to find savings opportunities; and
- QualityAdvisor™ data to compare and benchmark clinical performance against top alliance hospitals.