(Charlotte, N.C.) Leaders from the Premier healthcare alliance will speak across the country in July discussing methods to succeed under new healthcare reform scenarios by improving care quality, safety and cost-effectiveness. Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore will speak at the Health Forum and American Hospital Association Leadership Summit in San Diego on July 22. DeVore will discuss results from Premier’s QUEST: High Performing Hospitals® initiative and how it helps hospitals optimize performance in five critical areas: cost-effectiveness, evidence-based care delivery, mortality, harm reduction and patient satisfaction.

On July 15, DeVore will speak at the North Carolina Hospital Association in Hilton Head, S.C. She will address how to succeed under the new reform provisions through collaborative efforts that aim for high quality, cost-effective care. DeVore will discuss QUEST, as well as Premier’s Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Implementation Collaborative, designed to help hospitals keep patients healthy and out of intensive care settings while simultaneously shifting reimbursements to increasingly pay-based.

Gina Pugliese, RN, MS, vice president of the Premier Safety Institute®, will speak at the 2010 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Annual Conference in New Orleans on July 13. She will discuss strategies to eliminate outbreaks of Hepatitis C and other pathogens, and identify opportunities to ensure safe practices and raise safe injection awareness.

Twenty health systems with more than 70 hospitals, a broad variety of payer contracts and partnerships with thousands of physicians are participating in Premier’s ACO Implementation Collaborative. Working together, participating health systems will create the first ACOs in the market, accepting accountability for the health of more than 1.4 million patients and committing to lower costs by improving care coordination, efficiency, quality and patient satisfaction. Participants are located in 15 states, covering urban, rural and suburban populations that range in size from 4,000 to 7.5 million residents.

A voluntary project made up of more than 200 hospitals across 34 states, QUEST measures of high performance are foundational elements of reform, positioning participants for success in an environment linking pay to outcomes. Specifically, QUEST hospitals will be more likely to:

* Earn 1-2 percent Medicare incentive payments as part of the value-based purchasing program (VBP) through the reliable delivery of evidence-based care
* Avoid up to 3 percent of Medicare payment penalties for high readmission rates
* Avoid 2 percent Medicare payment penalty under VBP for hospital-acquired conditions (HACs)
* Avoid being fined 1 percent of payments for high rates of HACs
* Better manage the $197.2 billion in reimbursement cuts over the next decade.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,300 U.S. hospitals and 67,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to improve healthcare quality and affordability. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier maintains the nation’s most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has offices in San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington. www.premierinc.com