Premier, Inc has acquired Healthcare Insights, LLC for USD65 million in cash. Healthcare Insights is a privately-held, integrated financial management software developer that provides hospitals and healthcare systems with budgeting, forecasting, labor productivity and cost analytic capabilities.
"As the healthcare industry becomes more complex, value-driven, and data-dependent, the need for health systems to clearly understand their performance in every arena is a top concern," says Keith J Figlioli, Premier's senior vice president of health informatics. "It is not enough to have financial, operational and clinical data. Health systems must understand how to translate that information into effective cost containment strategies, as well as superior clinical outcomes."
The industry's increased focus on cost is largely driven by the Affordable Care Act, which reduces overall reimbursement, and increasingly holds providers accountable for the total costs and quality of the care delivered. Coupled with the growing movement to value-based payments such as bundling or shared savings, healthcare providers need solutions that can help them understand cost drivers and opportunities for improvement in detail.
Healthcare Insights is expected to enable Premier to offer a more complete solution that delivers additional value by adding budgeting, clinical financial management and productivity analytics to existing cost and quality applications, including the company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
Thomas Johnston, Healthcare Insights' chief executive officer, says: "This strategic combination will allow us to offer a more complete ERP solution with an end-to-end view of cost management. We expect this to increase our hospitals' and health systems' understanding of their clinical, operational and financial performance, and help them deliver more efficient, higher quality care."
