Premier healthcare alliance offers new program to help physicians provide quality care

Oct 29 2009

The Premier healthcare alliance is offering a new program to bridge the gap between clinical and business processes by helping hospitals and health systems improve quality and outcomes, control costs and increase profitability.

Premier Consulting Solutions’ (PCS) ProviderConnect™ program allows providers to view their organization’s future through the lens of a physician to ensure effective and optimal collaborative relationships.

Supported by industry and clinical experts, ProviderConnect utilizes data from Premier’s Perspective^® database, the nation's most comprehensive 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 hospital outpatient visits.

“You must align incentives with physicians, so one goal was to ensure the physicians are on board with process changes,” said Lynette Wheeler, cardiac, vascular and pulmonary service leader, Heartland Health, 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.”

Continued Wheeler, “So we redesigned how we did our work in the Cath Lab. We looked at the charge master and validated that we were capturing all charges. We looked at surgery. We looked at clinic processes and how they affected the Cath Lab and the inpatient areas. We looked at supplies.

“Ultimately, we won physician attention with wait times. In the first month of implementing simple scheduling changes, half the physicians reduced patient wait times by 50 percent. Since one goal is improving patient satisfaction, this was a definite winner.”

Said Wes Champion, senior vice president of PCS, “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. Our ability to offer this data, so necessary to engage physicians, is what truly drives change leading to quality and cost improvements. We believe that our data, tools and services truly differentiate Premier from any other organization in assisting hospitals to improve their operational and quality performance.”

ProviderConnect utilizes a comprehensive mix of Premier technologies and solutions, including:

• SpendAdvisor^® – analyzes total supply spend and identifies savings opportunities.
• QualityAdvisor™ – allows users to benchmark with top performers and to prioritize resource utilization and quality improvement efforts.
• OperationsAdvisor™ – offers productivity monitoring, assessment and comparative data.
• SafetySurveillor^® – improves infection prevention efforts and reduces costs associated with healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).
• ValueAdvisor™ – tracks value analysis to clinically and financially return on investment.
• Clinical Focus tools – provide price benchmarks on physician preference items including implantable devices.

It also features consulting services around physician alignment; service line strategy and revenue; physician preference items; practice and service line assessment and development; revenue cycle; and reimbursement.

ProviderConnect uses an integrated approach of strategic planning; financial, clinical and operational performance; and physician alignment solutions. 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, healthcare providers are able to achieve a minimum 4:1 client return-on-investment, and 15 to 25 percent or more improvement over their current cost position.

“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 Champion.

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.

Premier’s PCS offers physician preference consulting in clinical service lines including all aspects of cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, perioperative, women’s services, pharmacy, the emergency department and other clinical services.