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St. Joseph Health System Expands Affiliation With Premier Healthcare Alliance to Include Web-Based Infection Tracking Tool

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 15:00 CDT

The Premier healthcare alliance today announced that Orange, Calif.-based St. Joseph Health System (SJHS) will expand its relationship by deploying the infection control and pharmacy modules of Premier's SafetySurveillor™ in eight of its acute care hospitals in California. The integrated healthcare delivery system will use SafetySurveillor to track and prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and to optimize antibiotic use, thereby increasing patient safety and reducing costs.

Already a user of ClinicalAdvisor™, Premier's clinical efficiency and quality performance benchmarking application, SJHS has joined Premier's QUEST: High Performing Hospitals, a new program designed to help hospitals and healthcare systems drive healthcare to new levels of performance. QUEST will develop next-generation quality, safety and cost metrics with a level of consistency and standardization that does not exist today.

The system also joins Premier's Performance Improvement Portal, an online collaboration of top performers and best practices. The portal provides a library of performance improvement advice and best practices, and a networking community for knowledge sharing and interaction with industry specialists, hospital and health system peers and Premier's knowledge experts.

"St. Joseph Health System and our ministry hospitals are striving to provide Perfect Care to every community we serve," said Dr. Elliot Sternberg, chief medical officer for SJHS. "This new tool will assist us in identifying best practices and opportunities for improvement as we pursue safe, efficient, evidence-based, and patient-centered care."

SJHS will deploy SafetySurveillor in Northern California at Petaluma Valley Hospital, Petaluma; Queen of the Valley Medical Center, Napa; Redwood Memorial Hospital, Fortuna; St. Joseph Hospital, Eureka; and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, Santa Rosa; and in Southern California at St. Jude Medical Center, Fullerton; St. Mary Medical Center, Apple Valley; and St. Joseph Hospital, Orange.

More than 200 hospitals nationwide have chosen the Web-based application, making SafetySurveillor the most widely adopted infection control solution in the past 12 months. It helps hospitals meet state-mandated public reporting of certain HAIs, including screening for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile, some of the most common and harmful infections found in hospitals today. With SafetySurveillor hospitals can automatically detect HAIs and alert staff, facilitating timely intervention to reduce and prevent infections.

Premier's SafetySurveillor is one of the HAI surveillance system software vendors participating in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project to develop a standards-based solution for transmission of HAI data from hospitals using existing commercial software systems to the agency's National Healthcare Safety network.

St. Joseph Health System

St. Joseph Health System (SJHS) is a not-for-profit Catholic healthcare system established in 1982. Its 14 hospitals, three home health agencies and multiple physician groups serve Northern California, Southern California, and West Texas / Eastern New Mexico. SJHS is an industry leader in providing quality care. All of its hospital and home health entities are accredited by the Joint Commission; 10 received scores of 90 or better and in many cases, with commendation. With 22,000 full-time equivalents and $4 billion in net revenues, SJHS facilities in FY2007 had 137,157 discharges, 2,061,026 outpatient visits and 235,177 home health visits. Its community benefit was $461.7 million including care for the poor. SJHS is sponsored by The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange and corporate offices are in Orange, Calif.

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

Serving more than 2,000 U.S. hospitals and 50,000 other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming healthcare together. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier operates one of the leading healthcare purchasing networks and the nation's most comprehensive repository of hospital clinical and financial information. A subsidiary operates one of the nation's largest policy-holder owned, hospital professional liability risk-retention groups. A world leader in helping healthcare providers deliver dramatic improvements in care, Premier is working with the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia and Washington. For more information, visit www.premierinc.com.

Source: Business Wire

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