Healthcare Matters

Identifying new supply and practice opportunities and managing the changes required so they can be realized, is surely a data-driven process, but it’s also an art. It goes without saying that the evidence needs to be compelling; the sources need to be meaningful; and matters of timing and presentation need to be spot on.

We identify objectives, build business cases that justify them –and then we’ve got to sell them. Good change management practice is more than getting your audience intellectually satisfied. Compliance requires emotional commitment. Regardless of how analytical the audience, raw data rarely gets it done.

Premier’s latest announcement seems highly significant in this context. Don’t just marvel at the scale of the data that has been aggregated, but think about this “virtual healthcare community” as a “virtual change management machine.” In addition to being a killer data source, this environment creates a presentation framework that can expedite highly effective peer-to-peer, on-point discussions. And that’s where the rubber typically hits the road. If at all possible, it’s usually better to have someone else make the “close” for you.

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jun 07, 2012  — America’s largest healthcare performance improvement alliance has launched the world’s largest virtual healthcare community.

The Premier healthcare alliance’s PremierConnect(TM) technology platform will be at the fingertips of more than 100,000 clinicians, supply chain leaders, hospital executives and other healthcare providers nationwide, allowing them to interact as one in communities of common interest.

PremierConnect will connect data, knowledge and people in meaningful ways that support evolving care delivery models and accelerate the pace of performance improvement. The virtual community allows alliance members to instantly share learnings, data and strategies based on thousands of patient outcomes that can be used to benefit treatment anywhere, an ability that has been a missing link in care delivery to date.

“Health systems today need an integrated look into utilization, costs, efficiency and quality,” said Michael D. Connelly, M.A., J.D., FACHE, president and CEO of Catholic Health Partners. “With this information we can further build out the predictive capabilities that will help us find opportunities and enact corrective actions before they affect patients. This initiative is a critical foundational piece to our mission and the mission of the Premier alliance to improve the health of our communities.”

PremierConnect supports new ways to deliver care that are required by health reform, including accountable care, which emphasizes more clinical integration and healthier outcomes. Individual health systems can use it to connect care across all of their care sites – hospitals, physician offices, outpatient clinics and more. These population analytic capabilities provide insight into how to manage populations for improved outcomes.

According to Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore, “Leaders of healthcare systems will be able to easily make data-driven, evidence-based decisions that improve performance while making their communities healthier places to live. They’ll know which patients are driving undesirable outcomes, which physicians have the highest costs or the poorest performance, and why these scenarios are occurring.”

“Patients will have confidence that their care is based on proven innovations and best practices from top-performing clinical leaders nationwide,” continued DeVore. “And their providers will understand everything about their care — what drugs they’re taking or allergic to, what procedures they’ve had recently and more.”

PremierConnect will integrate Premier’s clinical, financial and operational comparative databases, containing one in four patient admissions and close to $43 billion in annual purchasing data. This information is updated every 30 days to ensure it is current. It will also continuously integrate real-time electronic health record data from over 325 hospitals. Premier’s quality, safety, labor and supply chain applications will be easily accessible in PremierConnect, helping providers make decisions based on a combination of quality, safety and cost information – not each individually.

“What we’ve built mirrors what we’re trying to do in healthcare — build a system that is coordinated and integrated, where communication is dramatically improved and we aren’t unnecessarily repeating work,” said Keith J. Figlioli, Premier’s senior vice president of healthcare informatics. “It will help eliminate unnecessary care that can compromise safety and add to already expensive bills for both consumers and health systems. It’s a new, better approach to care delivery, with a truly efficient way to treat patients and keep people healthy.”

Stakeholders across a health system all can benefit from PremierConnect. For example:

• A supply chain executive can make purchasing decisions based on price, quality and safety, supported by thousands of outcomes. He or she can also interact with peers nationwide to get feedback on products they’re considering for contracts and be alerted when new contracts are launched to immediately and easily obtain best pricing.

• A clinical integration executive can segment populations of patients to understand where to focus care management efforts and monitor the effectiveness of medical homes in improving care while reducing costs.

• An infection preventionist can be alerted to possible harm-related events within their system through real-time surveillance. They can also better coordinate care with other departments, such as Pharmacy, to ensure the proper drugs are administered.

• A physician or chief medical officer can monitor clinical performance, understand practice variation, access patient-level detail and support government reporting requirements. This information is clearly and simply presented and based on every diagnosis, procedure and patient visit.

• A human resources executive can access staffing plans and industry best practices to minimize inefficient processes that take too long or require too many employees to complete, or instances when higher paid employees do work that less expensive or experienced staff could do equally well.

• A Partnership for Patients program director will have access to data collection modules, best practice harm and readmission content, and a community of other healthcare professionals leading their own local programs.

PremierConnect is powered by IBM information management, business analytics, enterprise content management, social business, Rational, Tivoli and WebSphere software, as well as IBM Power Systems hardware to provide insights from vast amounts of data. “IBM is proud to be Premier’s technology partner for PremierConnect. We share Premier’s vision that healthcare transformation and innovation will be driven by collaboration that crosses organizational boundaries,” said Dan Pelino, general manager, IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences.

—Tom Finn