San Antonio health system joins Premier healthcare alliance quality improvement efforts to advance patient care, reduce co

Methodist Healthcare System, an equal partnership between the Methodist Healthcare Ministries and HCA, to participate in QUEST collaborative, access solutions addressing impact of healthcare reform to reduce HACs and readmissions, support The Joint Commission OPPE requirements

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio, Texas, has joined a trio of Premier healthcare alliance efforts aimed at addressing the strategic implications of health reform while driving quality and cost improvements.

Six Methodist hospitals, co-owned by Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) and the Methodist Healthcare Ministries, will participate in Premier's QUEST®: High Performing Hospitals collaborative, a voluntary, three-year project made up of approximately 200 hospitals across 34 states. QUEST is designed to optimize hospital performance in five critical areas, including cost-effectiveness, evidence-based care delivery, mortality and harm avoidance, and patient experience.

The Methodist facilities also joined Premier’s QualityConnect™ and SafetyConnect™ programs.

QualityConnect integrates quality and safety data to help hospitals make better decisions to improve quality of care while safely decreasing costs. This includes harm prevention to reduce hospital-acquired conditions (HACs); managing resource utilization variation; decreasing readmissions, mortality, and length-of-stay; and supporting The Joint Commission Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation (OPPE) requirements.

SafetyConnect helps hospitals safely reduce costs, protect patients more effectively and avoid Medicare payment penalties under the new value-based purchasing healthcare legislation by working to reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). With improvements in ongoing infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship, the solution can help increase operational and financial performance.

“By participating in these efforts, we are taking next steps toward delivering the highest quality, safest outcomes to our patients. We look forward to participating in these programs as we strive to further enhance the way we deliver care,” said Dr. Ken Davis, chief medical officer at Methodist Healthcare.

Said Premier Senior Vice President of Healthcare Informatics Keith J. Figlioli, “Methodist deserves tremendous credit for its commitment to implementing necessary solutions to help ensure the care they provide is sustainable and highly effective. They are a true marketplace leader, and in taking these steps, will have a positive effect on community health.”

About QUEST

Developed in partnership with Premier and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), QUEST is designed to springboard hospitals to new levels of performance and inform public policies with meaningful solutions, supported by real results. QUEST participants are challenged to overcome the main factors that lead to deaths, errors and excessive costs, and measure themselves against one another to achieve top performance based on the following goals:

  • Save lives: Eliminate avoidable hospital mortalities;
  • Safely reduce the cost of care: Reduce the costs for each patient's hospitalization;
  • Deliver the most reliable and effective care: Ensure that patients receive every recommended evidence-based care measure.
  • Improve patient safety: Prevent incidents of harm in more than 30 categories, including hospital-acquired conditions and birth injuries;
  • Increase satisfaction: Improve the patient's overall care experience and loyalty to the care providing facility.

Results from the first 18 months of the project released on October 21, 2009, show that the original 157 QUEST hospitals have saved an estimated total of 14,600 lives and $1.03 billion in one year. Of the approximately 2.3 million patients treated annually in these hospitals, 41,100 additional patients received treatments that met the highest quality patient care standards when compared to baseline performance at the outset of the project.

About QualityConnect, SafetyConnect

QualityAdvisor™, part of QualityConnect, combines clinically proven analytical methods with the nation’s largest benchmark database of more than 600 facilities to provide timely, actionable information in all levels of a healthcare organization. The solution identifies clinical and financial improvement opportunities, understands drivers for variation in practice, and monitors quality of care.

SafetySurveillor®, Premier’s automated solution in the SafetyConnect program, assists in preventing HAIs and optimizing antibiotic use. SafetySurveillor helps providers reduce infection rates leading to decreases in mortality and length of stay for infection cases while reducing costs; reduction in urinary tract infections; quicker intervention with appropriate drug therapy for critical patients; and reduced costs through the elimination of unnecessary MRSA screening for ICU patients. Premier is one of the automated surveillance system vendors capable of allowing upload of electronic HAI data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the agency's National Healthcare Safety Network.

About Methodist Healthcare System

Formed in 1995 out of a partnership of Methodist Healthcare Ministries, San Antonio's largest non-public funding source of community healthcare, and HCA, the Methodist Healthcare System is the largest and most preferred healthcare system in South Texas with 24 facilities. Eight facilities are acute care hospitals: Methodist Hospital; Methodist Heart Hospital*; Methodist Children’s Hospital*; Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital*; Northeast Methodist Hospital*; Metropolitan Methodist Hospital*; Methodist Stone Oak Hospital; and Methodist Ambulatory Surgery Hospital. *A Methodist Hospital facility.

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

Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,300 U.S. hospitals and 68,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to achieve high quality, cost-effective care. 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. http://www.premierinc.com



CONTACT:

Premier Inc.
Alven Weil, 704-733-5797

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