Premier, healthcare providers to create performance improvement collaboratives

The Premier healthcare alliance is working with hospitals, health systems and manufacturers to create performance improvement collaboratives that evaluate which clinical practices result in better outcomes while lowering costs.

The Performance Improvement Research Collaboratives (PIRCs) will consist of three to five provider organizations working to enhance their acute care delivery; as well as those who are building and implementing accountable care capabilities such as the organizations in Premier's Partnership for Care Transformation™ collaborative. These hospitals and health systems are working to eliminate waste, improve quality, and promote health and wellness across the continuum of care.

"All patients deserve the best care that can possibly be given. We're excited to share knowledge with other hospitals and to work with manufacturers to find better ways to provide care as healthcare providers across the country seek to improve outcomes," said John Bulger, DO, chief quality officer at Geisinger Health System.

The providers and Premier will work together with progressive manufacturers dedicated to improving quality and reducing costs across a wide range of critical disease states. The focus of the collaboratives is to help providers better understand, monitor, and deliver high-quality, patient-centered care.

"Key healthcare stakeholders are all experiencing the impact of healthcare industry change, and realizing that new business models are necessary to keep people safe, happy and alive while remaining competitive," said Wes Champion, senior vice president of Premier Performance Partners. "These new programs allow manufacturers to formally engage with providers that are proactively seeking ways to improve patient care."

Specifically, provider organizations and manufacturers (whether or not on contract with Premier) will join with Premier Research Services™ (PRS) to participate in 18- to 24-month multifaceted PIRCs that ultimately seek to improve quality while simultaneously reducing the cost of care in disease state specific areas of focus.

Innovative manufacturers have already begun work on the initial PIRCs including Pacira Pharmaceuticals Inc., an emerging specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the clinical and commercial development of new products that meet the needs of acute care practitioners and their patients.

The iterative steps of this process are worked through collaboratively by the hospital and health system, manufacturer, and PRS addressing the following:

• The burden of illness outcomes research: creating a call to action and establishing baseline metrics for performance in the disease state of interest.
• A predictive model designed to give providers of care a tool to readily pinpoint areas of opportunity.
• A disease state specific performance improvement program jointly designed by the manufacturer, key opinion leaders and Premier, which will be piloted in a small cohort of systems, then refined and scaled to the greater healthcare alliance.
• Monitoring disease state care improvement at a system level throughout the life of the collaborative.
• Engaging outside parties in the collaborative to validate and provide objectivity to the chosen metrics and elements of the performance improvement program.
• Widely disseminating the results to further expedite the real-world application of the outcomes into clinical practice.