Ms. DeVore assumed her duties as CEO of Premier in summer 2009. In an interview with Healthcare Informatics following her appointment to the position, she discussed the work Premier was doing to eliminate preventable healthcare-associated infections, a hot topic in healthcare as hospitals strive to improve quality and lower cost.
Premier’s hospitals tackled HAIs through an information-sharing portal developed for all South Carolina hospitals. According to the report, the portal allows hospitals to track their improvement against state and national benchmarks, as well as research the causes of HAIs and identify and promote new processes to eliminate infections.
“The problem for all the states is that this information is out there, but it’s all fragmented … We really think it’s through these public/private partnerships working together to make it happen, that will help healthcare reform and transformation really take place,” Ms. DeVore said. “Patient care organizations will be able to measure their own performance against state and national benchmarks. And through this research, they’ll be able to do more study about what seems to move the marks the most, the fastest.”
As the leader of one of the most influential health alliances in the country, Ms. DeVore is intimately involved in the challenges and opportunities presented by healthcare reform. In an interview with Inside Health Policy in 2010, Ms. DeVore tackled another pressing issue in the world of healthcare: the advent and development of accountable care organizations. She said as ACO provisions of the health reform law come online in 2012, Premier participants will have the infrastructure in place to capitalize on the program. She made it clear that CMS’ ACO design is not a “demonstration” but rather a “real program” that is fast developing regulations.
“Our intent here is to keep doing what health systems have always done: to try and help communities. But also to build, test and scale some of these new models and new measures that might help inform where the regulation around ACOs ultimately needs to go,” she said.
Prior to her role as president and CEO of Premier, Ms. DeVore served as COO of Premier and president of Premier Purchasing Partners. She also spent more than 20 years with then-Cap Gemini Ernst & Young as a senior healthcare industry management practice leader and member of the executive committee for the North American consulting organization.
Under Ms. DeVore’s leadership, Premier has won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and has been named there times as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere. She is the recipient of the 2007 Top 25 Women in Business by the Charlotte Business Journal.
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