A Medical Device Daily

QuadraMed (Reston, Virginia) reported that Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS; Los Altos Hills, California) has signed a $15.8 million contract to expand the use of QuadraMed CPR (QCPR) across its five-hospital network.

With this contract, DCHS has purchased software and services for the QCPR platform including interactive care-grid, order management, access management, clinical decision support, nursing documentation, chart management and additional software for scheduling, electronic document management, medical records, computerized physician order entry and patient registration.

This new agreement is in addition to the $6.7 million, initial phase 1 agreement for the QCPR integrated medication management system, which was originally finalized on Nov. 30, 2006.

In other agreement/contracts news: Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported that new agreements for ECG electrodes, cables, lead wires and defibrillator pads have been awarded to ConMed (Utica, New York); Covidien (Mansfield, Massachusetts); and S&W Healthcare (Brooksville, Florida).

The 36-month agreements, effective Sept. 1, are available to acute care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier healthcare alliance.

Additionally, Cape Fear Valley Health System (CFVHS; Fayetteville, North Carolina), a member of the Premier healthcare alliance, has reported $5.34 million in supply chain cost reductions in just 14 months through focused work with Premier's subsidiary, Premier Consulting Solutions (PCS). These savings will be reinvested into providing for the health of the Fayetteville community.

Through the efforts of a value analysis team, which included PCS representatives, and its steering committee, CFVHS said it began to recognize savings on 60% of project-identified savings even before the engagement was completed. The team identified the primary areas of supply spend savings, including orthopedics, pharmacy, cardiology and surgical services, and implemented the savings without any sacrifice to quality.

According to Kevin Jackson, vice president of Support Services at CFVHS, "We set out to identify $5 million in savings and were able to implement $5.34 million. You have to have a strong value analysis process in place, including internal and external personnel, to make changes like this work."