Premier Healthcare Alliance Launches New Technology Platform to Help Hospitals Improve Patient Outcomes, Reduce Costs.

Web Event to Feature Hospital Experts, Technology behind National Pay-for-Performance Project; Also Addresses Automated Surveillance Shown to Assist in Reducing Hospital Infections

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The use of technology to improve patient outcomes while reducing costs will be the focus off a national Web event hosted by the Premier healthcare alliance on Wednesday, February 21, from 2-3:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Featuring representatives from some of the nation's top hospitals and health systems, the Web event will focus on the launch of the Premier Performance Suite[TM], the technology behind the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)/Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) pay-for-performance project.

The Web event will feature the following:

* Stephanie Alexander, senior vice president, Premier Healthcare Informatics;

* John Currin, CEO, Alamance Regional Hospital, Burlington, NC;

* Marcia Rose, administrative director of Quality and Medical Staff Services, Bon Secours St. Francis Health System;

* Ken Turner, director of Performance Management, Bon Secours Health System, Inc., Marriottsville, MD;

* Kathy Wroten, manager of Infection Control, Christiana Care Health System, Wilmington, DE.

The Premier Performance Suite is a single source for integrating quality and safety, labor management, and supply chain efficiency. It provides Web-based performance measurement and benchmarking, real-time surveillance and best practices to help improve quality and reduce costs.

The Performance Suite includes the Perspective[TM] database, the largest clinical, financial and operational comparative database in the nation, with over 3 terabytes of data, 7.5 billion records and 700 hospitals with 5,900 users submitting data. It also features an automated infection control surveillance product that provides timely, actionable information for quick intervention by infection control professionals to reduce hospital infections and overuse of antibiotics.

"The Institute of Medicine identified healthcare infections and antimicrobial resistance as two of the largest health related issues facing the industry, and it suggests that the best approach to address the problems is with structured, coherent, timely information," said Premier's Alexander. "Healthcare information systems and services are the foundation for this type of infrastructure, providing clinicians with information to make decisions quickly. This tool frees up their time so that they can perform best practice training and active prevention observations, ultimately eliminating the potential causes of HAIs."

To register for the Web event or obtain additional information, visit www.premierinc.com/launch or contact the Premier Solution Center at 800.805.4608.

About Premier, 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Serving 1,700 hospitals and 44,000 other healthcare sites, Premier is the largest healthcare alliance in the United States dedicated to improving patient outcomes while safely reducing the cost of care. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates the nation's largest healthcare purchasing network, the most comprehensive repository of hospital clinical and financial information and one of the largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups in healthcare. Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, N.C. and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.premierinc.com.