July 28, 2020 – Premier Inc. (Charlotte, NC) announced enhancements to its crisis forecasting and planning technology. With the enhancements, the technology will now predict the COVID-19 census for any U.S. hospital on a given day. Premier’s tool enables hospitals and health systems across the country to visualize their facilities’ COVID-19-positive census in near real time and identify upcoming hotspots, providing critical intelligence to plan for both surges and routine care.
The company says that the tool uses a “hotspot score” that compares every U.S. county to a benchmark of pre-peak Bronx County in New York state, the week before the first surge overwhelmed Bronx County’s hospitals in April. Premier says that the enhanced hotspot score overcomes a drawback of early hotspot indicators, “which were susceptible to citing localities with large single-day spikes in case activity, such as an outbreak at a food plant, that did not ultimately overwhelm the local health system or result in high rates of mortality.”
In addition to identifying hotspots and forecasting census, the tool anticipates demand for key supplies so providers can take steps to avoid shortages within their facilities.
This crisis planning and forecasting tool is currently available to all Premier members at no cost as part of Premier’s differentiated solutions to the challenges healthcare providers face. Additionally, Premier members can subscribe by email to individualized, daily COVID-19 reports for their facilities.
