Health Care Honored by Premier Healthcare Alliance for Exceptional Supply Chain Innovation

Aurora Health Care has been recognized as the recipient of the second annual Supply Chain Innovation Award presented by the Premier healthcare alliance.

Aurora received two of the four awards presented and is one of only three of Premier’s 2,000 members to receive the award. The Supply Chain Innovation Award recognizes successful innovations that have created new levels of performance and competitive advantage while improving patient care and safely reducing costs.

“We’re honored to receive this national recognition for our efforts to find new ways of better managing the costs of maintaining and replacing medical equipment,” said Kenneth Peterson, Vice President of System Logistics at Aurora. “As a health care system we have made a commitment to help reduce the costs of health care and the processes that are recognized with these awards are resulting in a savings of millions of dollars.”

Patrick Trim, Aurora Director of Capital Equipment Services, accepted the award at the 2008 Premier Annual Breakthroughs Conference & Exhibition in Nashville, Tenn. “It was very important to create a structure within Capital Equipment Services that supports these particular programs and has the ability to address the new and future innovations that we have planned,” said Trim. “Centralizing staff and processes is more efficient. By incorporating Clinical Engineering Services into the supply chain, we can now use the centralized call center process to repair equipment quickly and increase patient satisfaction.”

“We also are using this centralized foundation to support the Asset Investment Recovery (AIR) program to support our ‘green’ efforts by reusing equipment, selling unneeded equipment, or using the spare parts to repair other Aurora equipment, thereby saving dollars and sharply reducing the scrap that was being sent to landfills,” added Trim.

“Achieving and sustaining strong supply chain performance is essential to a healthy bottom line, which ensures that the health needs of our community are met,” said Premier Purchasing Partners President Mike Alkire. “This award encourages sharing of best practices and breakthrough ideas so all Premier alliance members can accelerate performance in the supply chain.”

The Supply Chain Innovation Award also recognizes organizations that have worked with Premier to implement improvement ideas throughout the Premier membership. Winning ideas, such as new products, programs, services, processes and tools, must be in place and already creating value to be considered.

The winners of the award are:
— Aurora Health Care, Milwaukee – Won two awards;
— Montefiore Medical Center, New York;
— Geisinger Health System, Danville, Pa.