The Premier healthcare alliance has launched an $86 million “major new strategic plan” that will help hospitals leverage informatics to meet healthcare reform measures.
The funding will be invested over the next three years to expand the data foundation needed to support new models of healthcare delivery that encompass both acute and non-acute care settings, including accountable care organizations (ACOs).
The Charlotte, N.C.-based network is including new measures in informatics products to help hospitals predict reform impact, automate measures reporting and sustain quality and cost improvements in the areas of readmissions, value-based purchasing, infection prevention, waste reduction and harm avoidance.
Officials say data from existing products and tools will be integrated to give Premier's 2,300 member hospitals a more complete view into opportunities for further cost containment, care quality and patient safety gains.
“Using our data and collaborative capabilities, hospitals can compare their performance in specific areas, find opportunities for improvement and track the results of their efforts,” said Keith J. Figlioli, Premier’s senior vice president of healthcare informatics. “What’s missing in most systems today is integrated information from disparate sources, presented in a way that providers gain actionable insights.”
Premier officials say they have accumulated patient level information from more than 600 hospitals, with more than 309 million hospital visits in their database. The new plan is the next step in Premier’s efforts to evolve its data infrastructure and analytic capabilities to meet next-generation needs.
The informatics data integration plan is expected to:
- create top performance measures based on reform provisions and make them widely available in the industry;
- extend data collection and establish standards for non-acute and population-based measurement;
- ensure data is specific enough to be assessed by condition and by physician practitioner; and
- incorporate measures from Premier collaboratives into products, services and knowledge transfer tools.
“In collaboration with our members, we are setting the pace for the development and execution of top performance in healthcare delivery,” said Premier’s president and CEO, Susan DeVore. “Because we are exclusively owned by not-for-profit hospitals and understand that they must work together to transform care delivery, we are making this investment in infrastructure and business intelligence on their behalf to ensure they can survive and thrive under healthcare reform.”