ST. LOUIS – Officials at St. Anthony’s Medical Center, St. Louis’ largest free-standing hospital, say they saved $3 million in the hospital's first year with the Premier healthcare alliance.

“We’re extremely satisfied,” said Perry Willmore, the hospital's director of supply chain management, who noted the hospital's target goal is $9 million in savings. “We’re one of the few hospitals that not only made their budgets in the last fiscal year but we actually exceeded our budget. Our relationship with Premier had something to do with that, I’m sure.”

Willmore attributes part of the savings to joining Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier’s ASCEND (Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor) program, which helps hospitals achieve and sustain rapid supply chain performance improvements.

ASCEND “has brought us real value,” he said. “We’ve seen cost savings up to 37 percent on ASCEND contracts.

Premier officials say ASCEND, representing some 150 Premier member hospitals, 28,000 hospital beds and $3-plus billion in purchasing volume, offers specially negotiated contracts, simplified purchasing processes and SpendAdvisor MySpend, Premier’s spend management decision support tool.

St. Anthony's officials say they saved almost $2.4 million with the tool, including nearly $740,000 in exact matches during transition.

The hospital had worked with Premier Consulting Solutions prior to joining the network and identified about $1.5 million in annual contract savings. St. Anthony’s also uses Premier’s OperationsAdvisor labor management solution for productivity monitoring, assessment and comparative data.

St. Anthony's Medical Center, a tertiary care facility, also serves Jefferson County, Mo., and St. Clair and Monroe counties in Illinois. Its specialties include cardiology, women’s services, cancer care, orthopedics, neurology and emergency medicine. St. Anthony’s has more than and 800 physicians, dentists and other medical professionals in private practice. It operates urgent care centers in Arnold, Fenton, Crestwood and Lemay.