Premier Healthcare Alliance Recognizes Nation’s Top Hospitals for Achieving Superior Supply Expense Performance

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Premier healthcare alliance’s Purchasing Partners division has recognized 25 alliance members as winners of its second annual Supply Chain Excellence Award. Premier honored the winners – selected from its more than 2,100 eligible hospitals nationwide – at the 2009 Premier Annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition in Anaheim, Calif.

“The award supports the alliance and its efforts to improve the quality and cost of the care it offers.”

Premier’s Supply Chain Excellence Award is given to the nation’s top hospitals achieving superior supply expense performance as measured by Premier’s recently upgraded SupplyFocus^TM, the industry’s largest comparative database of operational and supply chain cost information for acute care hospitals. Winners were identified using four industry standard supply expense ratios and a case-mix-index-based peer grouping methodology to ensure that organizations of diverse sizes and complexity were considered equally.

“The Supply Chain Excellence Award celebrates the successes of our top performers while encouraging the sharing of best practices and breakthrough ideas to the benefit of the Premier alliance,” said Mike Alkire, president of Premier Purchasing Partners. “The award supports the alliance and its efforts to improve the quality and cost of the care it offers.”

To be eligible, each organization had to submit four quarters of calendar 2008 data to SupplyFocus by April 30, 2009. With 40 indicators measuring and trending performance in cost and operations, SupplyFocus enables hospitals to compare supply expense performance to that of similar facilities and easily identify improvement opportunities.

2009 Supply Chain Excellence winners are:

Bayfront Medical Center of Florida,

Bon Secours Community Hospital of New York,

Cabell Huntington Hospital, Inc. of West Virginia,

Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital of New Mexico,

Detroit Medical Center of Michigan,

Detroit Receiving & University Health Center of Michigan,

DMC Surgery Hospital of Michigan,

Espanola General Hospital of New Mexico,

Genesis Medical Center - De Witt Campus of Iowa,

Greene Memorial Hospital Inc. of Ohio,

Henry Ford Health System of Michigan,

Henry Ford Hospital of Michigan,

Hutzel Hospital of Michigan,

Marcum & Wallace Memorial Hospital of Kentucky,

Mercy Hospital - Western Hills of Ohio,

Mercy Hospital Fairfield of Ohio,

Northridge Hospital Medical Center – Roscoe of California,

Sinai-Grace Hospital of Michigan,

Socorro General Hospital of New Mexico,

St. Elizabeth Healthcare of Kentucky,

St. Elizabeth Medical Center Grant Co. of Kentucky,

St. Mary's Medical Center of Campbell County of Tennessee,

Union Hospital of Maryland,

University of Louisville Hospital of Kentucky,

Weirton Medical Center of West Virginia.

For more information, please visit: http://www.premierinc.com/about/news/awards/index.jsp.

About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

The Premier healthcare alliance is more than 2,100 U.S. hospitals and 58,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to improve healthcare quality and affordability. 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. Premier has offices in San Diego, Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia and Washington.