MercyRockford Health System, a vertically-integrated regional health system with five hospitals and 561 W-2 employed physician partners in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, has partnered with Premier, Inc., a healthcare improvement company, for group purchasing and expense reduction services on a system-wide basis. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Formed in January 2015 through the merger of Mercy Health System and Rockford Health System, MercyRockford also operates a wholly-owned health insurance company, 80 outpatient clinics, and offers a host of complementary services including retail pharmacy, DME, hospice, and home health services. MercyRockford chose Premier to support its integration strategy through technology-enabled supply chain and performance improvement data management services. The new five-year agreement includes Premier’s group purchasing services and sourcing, contract management and supply chain analytics powered by Premier’s performance improvement platform PremierConnect®.
“We aligned our organizations to create a stronger regional system of care,” said Javon R. Bea, president and CEO of MercyRockford. “With Premier we see a value-driven and collaborative partnership that goes beyond purchasing, and is strategically aligned with our integration plan. We look forward to forming an advanced, clinically integrated supply chain that extends across all of our healthcare sites. The MercyRockford/Premier collaboration will enable us to fulfill our mission of providing high-quality, coordinated care to patients.”
MercyRockford will leverage Premier’s data-driven group purchasing services and best practices to lower supply chain costs and drive value across its organization. The health system will also access PremierConnect Supply Chain, which has been nationally recognized for its mature and intuitive cloud-based analytics. PremierConnect Supply Chain is a procure-to-pay analytics as a service suite that allows users to integrate, monitor, plan and manage supply chain and financial work streams, enabling smart enterprise-wide procurement decisions across hospitals and growing health systems.
