Healthcare Reform, HIT, Organizational Leadership: Topics Premier Healthcare Alliance Experts Will Discuss in September

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Premier healthcare alliance experts will speak around the country in September discussing how heart failure care relates to reform, quality technology, effective organizational leadership, meeting life safety compliance codes and the use of contrast agents.

Joe Pleasant, FHIMSS, Premier CIO and senior vice president, will participate in a CIO panel at the North Carolina Technology Association Charlotte WISE event to discuss the benefits of cost-effective, quality technology in Charlotte, N.C. on September 21.

Leslie Schultz, PhD, CPHQ, Premier’s senior director of QUEST, will speak during a free Premier AdvisorLive® webcast on improving heart failure care on September 9. She will discuss how heart failure care ties to the challenges of healthcare reform, such as readmissions and value-based purchasing, and how hospitals participating in Premier’s QUEST: High Performing Hospitals collaborative are improving quality in this area.

Premier member experts, Dru Malcolm, MSN, RN, chief nursing officer/assistant administrator and Kimberly Rapcan, RN, BSN, manager of clinical integration at Indian Path Medical Center (Kingsport, Tenn.) will also speak during the heart failure care teleconference. They will discuss process recommendations and heart failure care improvements they have achieved through QUEST, and lessons learned that other hospitals can implement to improve their overall care scores.

On September 28, Jan Englert, RN, Premier QUEST director of Client Services, will discuss how best practices in areas such as innovation, leadership and employee engagement improve performance at the Baldrige Regional Conference in Franklin, Tenn. In 2009, Premier alliance members AtlantiCare of Egg Harbor Township, N.J. and Heartland Health of St. Joseph, Mo. received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Premier was also recognized as an award recipient in 2006.

During a September 15 AdvisorLive webinar, Dan Northway, director of facilities management and David Jones, vice president of support services, both of Heartland Health, will discuss meeting life safety compliance codes, one of the most common Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) citations.

Alpesh Amin, MD, MBA, professor and executive director of the Hospitalist program at the University of California, Irvine will speak during a Premier webinar on September 8. He will discuss results from a Premier Research Services study using Premier’s data on echocardiography and the use of contrast agents.

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 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