What You Should Know:
– Premier, a technology-driven healthcare performance improvement company announced its acquisition of IllumiCare, a healthcare technology firm renowned for its EMR-agnostic platform. This strategic move significantly expands Premier’s capabilities in the clinical decision support (CDS) space by integrating IllumiCare’s real-time clinical and financial data at the point of care.
– The acquisition aims to empower providers to make optimal clinical decisions while simultaneously managing costs, ultimately reducing hospital stays, easing administrative burdens, and improving patient outcomes. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Enhancing Clinical Decision Support with Financial Visibility
IllumiCare, headquartered in Birmingham, AL, has built a strong reputation for enabling better clinical decisions by providing real-time data on treatment costs directly to providers. Its flagship product identifies inpatient medication and diagnostic use that is unlikely to offer clinical benefit based on established medical standards. Crucially, it attributes the actual supply cost to the ordering provider, making real costs transparent at the point of care. This unique approach facilitates upstream interventions in formulary and order sets and delivers highly targeted “nudges” to clinicians.
“Hospitals are battling rising costs and shrinking margins,” said David Zito, Premier’s President of Performance Services. He added, “IllumiCare’s real-time cost attribution capabilities will be a game changer, differentiating Premier in a competitive CDS market with a smarter, more robust CDS solution. Together, we can help create financial efficiencies for virtually any provider, in any clinical setting, while helping them deliver care that is better and safer for patients”.
Impact Across the Care Continuum
The IllumiCare platform is already utilized by over 82,000 providers, including independent physicians and ambulatory networks, and is compatible with more than 50 EMR systems across the care continuum. This broad compatibility significantly extends Premier’s existing CDS technology, allowing the combined entity to help health systems and clinically integrated networks:
- Close care gaps
- Improve coding accuracy
- Support outpatient risk capture
- Optimize clinical trial recruitment
- Succeed in value-based payment models
Post-Acquisition Plans
The combined solution is expected to offer providers a more robust, turnkey solution with a demonstrated return on investment of up to 10 to one. Premier plans to begin marketing the acquired solution under its Stanson Health brand this summer. The newly combined capabilities will be officially debuted at Premier’s annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition, scheduled for July 15-17 in National Harbor, MD.
