Premier, Inc. Overview

What Premier is

Serving more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 80,000-plus other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming healthcare together. Approximately 200 hospitals and health systems created and entirely own the Premier alliance. Premier's mission is "to improve the health of communities."

Why Premier exists

Premier brings nationwide knowledge to improve local healthcare. It does this by collecting and analyzing clinical and financial data from its member hospitals, organizing committees of members to make decisions and set direction for the alliance, sponsoring seminars and conferences, and sharing best practices. By doing so, Premier unites a fragmented, chaotic and inefficient healthcare system to enable hospitals to provide patients with reliably high-quality healthcare at the lowest cost. Premier uses facts to determine the best practices and products that drive the best patient outcomes. Everyone wins when there is no sacrifice in quality or cost.

What Premier does

• Knowledge sharing about and group contracting for hospital products and services. Premier organizes member committees to evaluate products and services and select those to be placed on contract. Using the buying clout of the entire group of hospitals, Premier staff negotiates contracts. These contracts are approved by the member committees. Premier's field force works with hospitals to implement contracts. This collaborative action reduces hospitals' staffing needs, improves productivity, and delivers hundreds of millions of dollars in validated savings to our member hospitals.
• Shares clinical knowledge so that hospitals can learn from one another. Premier collects data from participating hospitals. We house the nation's largest detailed clinical and financial database, holding information on more than 130 million patient discharges. Web-based tools allow hospitals to compare their performance in specific areas to peers and best performers, find opportunities for improvement, and track the results of their efforts. This data warehouse is used by the Food and Drug Administration for drug surveillance and by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to evaluate next-generation payment models.
• Enables hospitals to share insurance claims experience and risk. Hospitals pool money together through Premier to cover the professional liability risks they face. They also share knowledge on ways to improve patient safety and reduce risks. As a result, participants gain control over insurance costs.

Who owns Premier

Approximately 200 hospitals, health systems and providers, including large systems operating multiple hospitals, academic medical centers associated with universities, and community-owned hospitals entirely own Premier. Owners range from small and rural to large inner-city facilities. Owner hospitals and health systems share the common purpose of operating for social good, and they share with Premier the mission of improving the health of communities.

Premier is very proud of our benefit offering to employees.  Our highly competitive program is designed to be flexible and supportive in allowing employees to build their own personal benefits plan. Employees are given a benefit allowance that allows them to purchase benefits for themselves and dependents. Any allowance available after making benefit selections is payable to the employee.

• You choose between a coverage-rich nationwide PPO or HSA medical plan.
• PPO or HRA dental coverage with the dentist of your choice.
• Comprehensive PPO vision coverage.
• Individual, spouse and child life insurance.
•  Accidental death and dismemberment insurance.
• Short- and long-term disability coverage at no cost to you.
• Buy up life, disability and long term care coverage.
• Business travel insurance.
• Matching 401(k) program with immediate vesting.
• Pension plan.
• Annual incentive bonus program.
• A competitive vacation, sick, and holiday time-off plan.
• Medical Reimbursement, dependent care and transit pre-tax flexible spending account.
• Tuition reimbursement for undergraduate and graduate studies.
• Employee assistance program with wellness and dependent care components.
• Flexible scheduling and remote work arrangements.

Premier's culture is built upon a foundation of core values:

• Integrity of the individual, the enterprise and the alliance.
• Passion for performance and a bias for action, creating real value for all stakeholders, and leading the pace.
• Innovation: Seeking breakthrough opportunities, taking risks and initiating meaningful change.
• Focus on people: Demonstrating respect for all and mutual commitment to the success of the alliance, our employees, our business partners and the communities we serve.

To embed and sustain this values-based culture, employees engage in a variety of formal and informal activities. Here are just a few illustrative examples:

Premier Learning Institute

Because we know the exceptionally talented people who work for Premier want to be the best that they can be, we are strongly committed to providing ample opportunities for personal and professional growth. Toward that end, we provide all employees with numerous avenues for pursuing professional development, specialty training, and continuing education. Our Premier Learning Institute (PLI) and its three “colleges” offer a variety of learning opportunities through eLearning, classroom training, live web-based education sessions, and interactive simulations. Additionally, PLI has partnered with many institutions, including a prominent university, to offer staff significant discounts on degree and certificate programs. Employees who take advantage of these programs and discount also have the opportunity to benefit through our healthy tuition reimbursement program.

Live Well, Be Premier

Our Live Well, Be Premier program focuses on providing employees with education, physical fitness programs and other wellness events to boost employee health and satisfaction. Take part in our free on-site exercise classes. Relax with our on-site massage offering or partake in an educational offering to learn “How to have a Healthy Heart”. These are a few of the many Wellness offerings throughout the year.

Social responsibility

Our Social Responsibility program is a way for Premier to build healthy communities by giving back. Donating time and money to a worthy cause is important to our employees, Premier and our communities. In addition to our organized company-wide volunteer day, Premier endorses individual volunteering with an associated financial match and paid team-based volunteering during work hours. Employees also enjoy the benefit of wearing jeans each Friday if they make a minimal donation to the selected monthly non-profit organization. Lastly, Premier also has a “matching gift” program for to financial match employee donations to non-profit agencies and higher educations institutions.

Environmental leadership

For multiple consecutive years, Premier has received the Champions for Change Award from Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E) for our environmental leadership in helping hospitals reduce waste and toxicity. Premier’s “Yes to Green” team is committed to incorporating “green” and environmentally preferable considerations in the acquisition, use, maintenance, reuse, recycling, and disposal of products and services used throughout Premier corporate offices, business operations and conference services.

Values Conference

Premier’s Values Team of cross-functional employees and senior executive sponsors exists to identify opportunities and means by which Premier can build and strengthen its organizational culture and values. One of the many roles the Values Team takes on is designing our annual Values Conference. Each year, the conference agenda addresses how we can better present ourselves as "One Voice, One Organization, One Premier."

Premier Ideas

The Premier Ideas Web tool was born from an employee suggestion to implement an ongoing, instant, and anonymous method for all to provide input into our continuous improvement. Accessed through the company intranet site, it is a place where employees can make comments, suggestions and pose questions for immediate response.

Recognition and rewards

One of the ways Premier reinforces our "focus on people" value is through recognition and rewards of various types. Our Recognition and Rewards Program is managed by members of the the Values Team and the HR department. Jointly, these groups identify (often from employee ideas and suggestions) appropriate rewards and recognition channels to recognize colleagues for values-based behavior, performance excellence and team accomplishments.

Fun Factor

The Fun Factor is an organic group loosely and informally organized to add a big dose of FUN into the workplace. The grassroots efforts of this team have spearheaded events such as a Lucky Charms eating contest on St. Patrick's Day, holiday decorating contests, conference room Wii tournaments and scavenger hunts. These events continue to add spark and energy to everyday life at Premier.

Premier Council on Diversity and Inclusion mission statement:

As a demonstration of our commitment to empower all employees, Premier embraces and incorporates diversity and inclusion throughout our business by cultivating an inclusive culture that provides equitable opportunities in a positive work environment.

The Council on Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) positively impacts Premier’s culture by clearly communicating and shaping the Diversity message. We value the contributions of all employees, fostering an atmosphere of trust, inclusiveness and openness that supports the growth of long-lasting relationships among our employees, members, suppliers and communities. In our organization, the CDI stimulates the concept of diversity and inclusion to fully engage, utilize and employ differences in background and perspective.

As a part of Premier’s commitment to creating a values-based, inclusive community, educational and developmental opportunities are available to share diverse knowledge and thinking. Leadership and staff receive diversity-related training and the CDI promotes development programs such as mentoring throughout the organization. Premier views diversity of ideas, thought, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, experience, family background, culture, and all other facets of diversity in a pluralistic way, creating a systemic values-based culture.