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Premier facilities, whose combined workforce numbers almost 3 million, will receive a combination of satellite broadcasts and Web-based education through this agreement.
An educational partnership with one of the
country's largest hospital group purchasing organization (GPO) promises
to take multimedia healthcare continuing education to a new level. In
April, Premier Inc., a GPO that represents about one-third of U.S. hospitals
entered a partnership agreement with GE TiP-TV and HealthGate that will
allow the three companies to develop and deliver high-caliber educational
programming to Premier's more than 1,800 member institutions and affiliated
hospitals.
With this agreement, subscribing Premier facilities
will have the opportunity to receive all TiP-TV satellite programming
as well as have access to HealthGate's Internet-based professional content.
The partnership is unprecedented in that it combines satellite broadcast
and Web-based programs to cover the diverse and ever- changing needs of
hospitals to provide targeted medical education for staff.
“In the same sense that Premier’s group purchasing operation leverages the buying power for medical equipment and supplies, one part of our education mission is to bring that same market power to bear in providing educational resources to our hospitals,” says Bruce Ente, director of distance learning for Premier, whose operations are managed from the company’s three corporate locations in Chicago, San Diego and Charlotte, N.C.
“What we’ve tried to do over the last year and a half is put together a multimedia arsenal of professional continuing education resources. The idea was that hospitals need a lot more than syringes to be successful these days — and one of the things they need is education.”
Premier was formed in 1995 through the merger of three successful and longstanding hospital purchasing alliances. The GPO leverages its members’ group buying power to purchase more than $12 billion annually in durable and consumable medical goods. Premier owners and other members include many of the country’s freestanding community hospitals and several leading multi-hospital systems, such as Catholic Healthcare West. The hospitals combined workforce numbers an estimated 2.7 million, Ente notes, and that huge staff is one of the key reasons Premier decided to explore medical professional education on an alliance-wide basis.
“It’s a gigantic workforce, and of course many of the people working at Premier hospitals — either by law or for professional advancement — need or want continuing education credits,” he says. “In essence, that’s why we were so anxious to have a contract for satellite education that would be able to reach an audience of more than 200 Premier owners and a total complement of more than 1,800 institutions.”
As a leader in technology and education services, GE endeavors to provide a wide range of CE offerings that meet the varied needs of its many customers.
The process that led to Premier’s decision to enter a partnership with TiP-TV and HealthGate was both painstaking and thorough. GE and Premier employed Six Sigma methodology, a scientific method of evaluating a wide range of business objectives, to define Premier’s education needs and evaluate partners best able to meet those needs. In the process, Ente notes, TiP-TV and HealthGate emerged as best-of-class partners whose products could be easily and effectively combined to meet Premier’s broad-based needs.
“The healthcare industry is pretty data driven, and Six Sigma methodology is very data intensive — it’s a process for assuring that you are making good, sound decisions,” says Dave Ross, manager of TiP-TV network development. GE found it encouraging, Ross says, that before making its decision Premier conducted a rigorous review of both its overall professional education needs and the manner in which distance education might meet those needs. “They looked specifically at what kinds of distance education would meet those needs most effectively from a price and quality standpoint. Premier’s conclusion was that a blended solution is much stronger than any one medium,” Ross says.
It was Premier’s experience with GE in other business areas, and GE’s reputation in satellite and other forms of continuing education, that cinched the deal, Ente says. “One of the things that was attractive to us about GE as a business partner is that they have a long, successful track record as a provider of medical continuing education. They also have a substantial installed base and a good history of customer service and responsiveness to customer needs — and that was a plus in their favor,” he says.
Premier’s decision to seek a contract for professional education, and to enter into a partnership with GE TiP-TV and HealthGate, Ente explains, was made based in large part on its assessment of member hospitals’ needs. Premier first conducted extensive surveys of its owner institutions and other affiliated hospitals to determine their current involvement in broadcast and Web-based education, their plans to enhance such offerings, and the perceived advantages of using broadcast over other media for professional continuing education. The survey responses indicated an even higher degree of interest than expected, Ente notes. More than two-thirds of Premier hospitals surveyed are already using some form of satellite technology for professional healthcare education or plan to do so soon. From TiP-TV, Premier learned that about 100 of its own member hospitals are currently using TiP-TV, with 4,500 continuing education credits awarded in 2000.
“We took that as a pretty strong endorsement of our owners’ interest in moving forward with this, and when we asked hospitals about the advantages of using satellite programming we received some very enthusiastic responses,” Ente says. TiP-TV identified more than 1,200 Premier member hospitals who were current candidates or good prospects for using satellite broadcasting for professional education.
Besides the opportunity to increase its programming base to a larger number of U.S. hospitals, GE TiP-TV is looking forward to developing new programming to expand TiP-TV’s existing offerings to new audiences. “Premier understands that TiP-TV offers programming for the whole hospital. There will be a joint effort to leverage each other’s expertise to make sure the right kinds of content are coming across the network,” Ross says.
The TiP-TV partnership initially will include more than 200 Premier owner/members, and participation is expected to grow as the program gets under way. Also included in the partnership arrangement is the creation of a private broadcast network offering several hours annually of custom programming for Premier owner institutions. That private channel will function as a separate network that can be used for a variety of purposes, from senior executive meetings to best practices forums, new product demonstrations and rollouts, and even national-scale Premier “town hall” meetings. “Obviously, that private network channel is a real advantage to us because it will allow Premier senior executives to communicate directly with their hospital counterparts. We hope that our members will see it as an incentive to enroll,” Ente says.
The private network will augment Premier’s current methods of communicating company information and special bulletins — its Web site-based newsletter and a corresponding print version, Ente says. “Those formats are primarily static. It’s not nearly the same as having a real person talking to you in real time — and that’s one of the things we see as a big advantage of the private network channel: enhancing Premier’s timeliness and responsiveness to our customers.”
GE TiP-TV plans to develop new programming to expand its existing offerings to new audiences throughout healthcare facilities.
Before embarking on its quest for a partner to provide professional education via satellite, Premier Inc., one of the country’s largest hospital group purchasing organizations (GPO), surveyed a sample of its members to determine their level of interest. Bruce Ente, Premier’s director of distance learning, says the company was surprised by the widespread receptiveness among survey respondents to the idea of establishing or enhancing satellite education.
The survey found that nearly 70 percent of Premier members were either already using some form of satellite education or planned to do so within the year. Of those that weren’t using satellite programming, 75 percent expressed a strong interest in exploring the use of satellite for professional education.
When asked about the advantages of satellite programming over other delivery methods, Ente says members cited the following as key: access to national experts, efficiency and effectiveness, travel cost savings, the breadth of topics available, and the ability to videotape and archive satellite programs.
Partnership at a Glance
The educational partnership brings clinical content to Premier’s approximate 200 owners, 800 operating hospitals, and 900 affiliated hospitals.
Premier institutions will receive the following educational benefits from TiP-TV:
A standard satellite installation with access to all TiP-TV programming.
More than 200 hours each year of educational broadcasts targeted to physicians, nurses, imaging technologists, administrators and other healthcare professionals.
Processing and tracking of continuing education applications for accredited programs.
A subscription to edge magazine, which features TiP-TV broadcast schedules, other educational offerings and new technology stories.
Use of TiP-TV for private satellite programming specifically targeted to Premier members. The channel will deliver real-time custom programming, ranging from hospital executive meetings and national “town hall” sessions to new product education and best practices sharing.
Premier institutions will receive the following educational benefits from HealthGate:
HealthGate’s CHOICE Platform, an Internet-based professional services application with access to 2,200 hours of “courseware.”
Access to leading medical and clinical databases, such as MEDLINE, CINAHL, CANCERLIT, and AIDSLINE.
Comprehensive patient and consumer education covering a wide range of diseases and chronic conditions, in addition to wellness education.
Order a copy of edge Magazine to read more articles like this and get online, broadcast, and videocassette course listings. Send an email to: TiP-TVedgeMagazine@med.ge.com
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