Premier Healthcare Alliance Helps Hospitals Test, Measure and Share Best Practices
CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Memorial Healthcare System of Hollywood, Fla., has joined a pair of collaborative projects addressing the strategic implications of healthcare reform to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of care.
Memorial Healthcare System joined a new collaborative to launch accountable care organizations (ACOs). As the fifth-largest public healthcare system, Memorial expects to be among the first in the nation to create ACOs in its market, which will further enhance care coordination, efficiency, quality and patient satisfaction. Organized by the Premier healthcare alliance, the ACO Implementation Collaborative includes 23 health systems representing more than 80 hospitals and 1.5 million patients nationwide. Participants will work together to test, measure and share best practices for overall health and wellness in their communities.
Memorial Healthcare System has also joined Premier's QUEST®: High Performing Hospitals collaborative, a voluntary, three-year project linking more than 200 hospitals across 34 states. QUEST is designed to optimize hospital performance in five critical areas: cost-effectiveness, evidence-based care delivery, mortality reduction, harm reduction and patient satisfaction.
“By embarking on these efforts, Memorial Healthcare System is focusing on patients and creating models that others will seek to learn from and emulate,” said Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore. “The work required through these projects is extremely challenging and Memorial Healthcare System deserves tremendous credit for its commitment. Memorial is a true marketplace leader, and in taking these steps, will have an even more positive effect on community health.”
About ACOs
ACOs are defined as a group of healthcare providers coming together to accept accountability for a defined patient population’s care. ACOs are designed to keep patients healthy and out of intensive care settings, while simultaneously shifting reimbursements to increasingly pay based on the achievement of top performance goals that drive improved patient outcomes and cost-effectiveness.
Members of the ACO Implementation Collaborative will work to build the critical components of accountable care, including:
- Patient-centered foundation that designs the ACO from a patient’s perspective to foster better engagement, satisfaction and increased accountability for health;
- Health homes that deliver primary care and manage health and wellness;
- New approaches to primary, specialty and hospital care to reward coordination, efficiency and productivity;
- Tightly integrated relationships with specialists, ancillary providers and hospitals so they are similarly focused and aligned to achieve high-value outcomes;
- Provider/payer partnerships and reimbursement models that incent improved outcomes, rewarding value over volume; and
- Population health IT infrastructure, including health information exchanges to enable coordination across provider networks.
Next steps as a part of the collaborative include the development of measures of success to include the health status of the defined population; the patient experience with care; the cost of care; and the collection and analysis of these measures.
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 healthcare-acquired infections and birth injuries; and
- Increase satisfaction: Improve the patient's overall care experience and loyalty to the care providing facility.
About Memorial Healthcare System
Memorial Healthcare System is the fifth-largest public healthcare system in the country and a national leader in quality care and patient satisfaction. Its facilities include Memorial Regional Hospital, Memorial Regional Hospital South, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, Memorial Hospital West, Memorial Hospital Miramar, Memorial Hospital Pembroke and Memorial Manor nursing home. For more information, visit mhs.net.
About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,400 U.S. hospitals and nearly 70,000 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
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