Insider Susan DeVore on Reducing Waste and the Path to Alternative Payments in Healthcare

<p>Susan DeVore has been in and around the healthcare industry for most of her life – long before she became president and CEO of Premier Inc., a company that unites an alliance of more than 4,000 hospitals and health systems and approximately 165,000 other providers and organizations to transform healthcare.&nbsp;</p><p>It’s a little-known fact that Susan’s roots at Premier date back to her childhood when her father, a biomedical engineer, worked for a predecessor to the company. After working at Ernst &amp; Young – including time as a partner and senior healthcare industry management practice leader, among other roles – she got the call to interview at Premier.&nbsp;</p><p>No one was aware of Susan’s company legacy at that time, but after she joined, there were longtime employees who remembered her attending the company picnic or other gatherings as a young teenager.&nbsp;</p><p>Susan’s lifelong focus on improving the healthcare system and her current role at Premier – driven by insight from such a vast network of care delivery organizations – combine to give her an incredibly valuable perspective for solving healthcare’s biggest challenges. Premier’s network enables it to maintain a dataset that encompasses roughly 45% of patients in the US. Those data inform Susan’s leadership and the decisions the company makes to help solve cost and quality challenges and develop a unique model of care delivery.&nbsp;</p><p>At the HIMSS Global Conference &amp; Exhibition in February Susan will be delivering a keynote session titled, “<a href="https://www.himssconference.org/education/keynote-speaker-susan-devore">Healing from Within: Leading Change, Inspiring Action</a>.” But you can hear her first on this episode of <em>Breaking Health Podcast</em>. Susan’s conversation with Keith Figlioli covers a number of pressing topics including:&nbsp;</p><p>• <b>Reducing Waste in the System – </b>Susan talks about how there’s still 30% waste in the system and three times unwanted variation in care delivery, and how these challenges c