Lafayette General Health (LGH) has extended its nearly 20-year partnership with Premier, Inc. (Nasdaq:PINC) for an additional five years, as well as expanded access to Premier performance services across all of its hospitals.

LGH is a nonprofit, community-owned regional health system with six hospitals, including two major teaching hospitals, and several affiliations with facilities that serve the south-central region of Louisiana. For years, its flagship hospital, Lafayette General Medical Center, has used both Premier's supply chain and performance services to drive cost and quality efficiencies, as well as better outcomes and patient experiences.

"Our long-term, strategic partnership with Premier has supported Lafayette General Health as we've grown to become a strong, aligned organization," said David L. Callecod, president, LGH. "As we further transition toward high-value care delivery, Premier is our trusted partner in implementing cost-effective solutions that improve outcomes across the continuum."

The extended agreement between LGH and Premier is effective through March 2020. LGH hospitals will continue to leverage Premier's group purchasing organization to reduce expenses through the aggregation of data, purchasing and best practices. In addition, Lafayette General Medical Center will continue to access industry-leading SaaS (software-as-a-service) quality, safety and operations analytics powered by Premier's performance improvement platform PremierConnect(R). PremierConnect enables the sharing of insights and integrated data from alliance members to drive effective and efficient clinical, financial and operational decisions.

In expanding the partnership, all LGH hospitals, including any future hospital sites, will implement the following PremierConnect SaaS solutions to rapidly aggregate, cleanse and manage their data for actionable insights on care delivery and outcomes.

  -- PremierConnect Quality analytics to drive quality cycle management,

     improve resource utilization and eliminate unjustified variation.

  -- PremierConnect Safety clinical surveillance analytics to monitor and

     protect patients from infections, harmful drug interactions and other

     adverse events.

  -- PremierConnect Operations labor and productivity benchmarking analytics

     for insights on labor performance across the continuum of care, including

     hospitals, physician practices and outpatient care facilities.

"Healthcare transformation takes providers coming together to share innovations and insights with each other. It also demands an integrated approach to performance improvement that spans the scope of all points in the care process," said Michael J. Alkire, chief operating officer, Premier. "Over the years, Lafayette General Health has been essential to the co-creation of solutions that solve tomorrow's demands. We look forward to continuing to work with them as an enabling agent of change helping to further their mission to improve the health of Louisiana communities and scale solutions that work across the country."