Connection and Premier: A Partnership That Has Withstood the Test of Time

Bob Acosta

Connection is now in its 22nd year as an approved supplier of IT products, services, and solutions to the Premier membership—the largest healthcare group purchasing organization (GPO) in the country. Premier serves more than 4,000 hospitals and health systems, and more than 175,000 other providers and organizations.

The secret to our continued success is that our two organizations share a mutual goal in realizing the importance of positively impacting the quality of patient care for all levels of providers. By working together, Connection and Premier determine the best practices and products that drive the best patient outcomes. Everyone wins when there is no sacrifice in quality or cost.

This Year’s Theme

#Breakthroughs24, Premier’s national members conference and exhibition, will be held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland on July 23–25, 2024. The Connection team is excited to be part of it. In addition, we are pleased to announce that we will be joined by Dell Technologies, who’ll be demonstrating and discussing their solutions designed for healthcare.

The future of healthcare will not be created by one person. It won’t be revolutionized by just one system or institution. Our country’s best tomorrow requires the commitment of a community—gathered and united. From artificial intelligence to supply chain innovations, #Breakthroughs24 is where healthcare systems discover the latest advancements in suppliers, gain greater insights and partnerships, and where we stand in our goal of moving patient care forward.

Key Topics

  • Supply chain success
  • Health equity
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Workplace culture and retention
  • Tech enablement in healthcare
  • Supplier diversity
  • Consumer measure of value
  • Delivering value to your communities 

Better Partnerships for Better Care

This year, Connection is partnering with Dell Technologies to focus on radiology as a service—which is driven by clinical requirements and necessitated by the rising incidence of chronic diseases and the demand for advanced diagnostic technologies. Medical professionals require larger imaging files to be accessed in real time, virtual peer reviews, and robust clinical data retention solutions. Dell Technologies addresses these needs through their infrastructure as a service (IaaS) program, designed specifically for medical imaging. This program ensures the power, scalability, reliability, and security of Dell’s products through a managed service that enhances business agility. The comprehensive service includes robust monitoring tools, operating system patching to maintain security, a suite of proactive incident avoidance services, and optional enhancements for audit and data protection. 

Dell Technologies’ IaaS for medical imaging is underpinned by financially backed service level agreements (SLAs) guaranteeing uptime and performance, with a promise of 99.9999% uptime and millisecond performance. The solution is fully managed 24/7, with an economical “per exam” cost structure. Dell’s common platform supports multiple workloads, including electronic health records (EHR), imaging, life sciences, and AI—streamlining the need for multiple vendors and management stacks. The platform’s capabilities extend to modern integrations like native replication for cloud storage, ensuring data stays on-premises while leveraging cloud functionalities. This solution optimizes performance and security and provides a unified, efficient, and scalable approach to managing medical imaging infrastructure.

A Persona-based Approach

In addition to Radiology as-a-Service, Dell Technologies is utilizing a persona-based strategy to help take selecting technology for the healthcare workforce to the next level. The focus is on enhancing both patient care and business efficiency through secure digital workspaces. Healthcare professionals increasingly need to move seamlessly across various devices and locations, from shared workstations to personal two-in-ones and home computers. Dell Technologies uses a persona-based approach to address needs by offering the right technology for the specific use case for a secure, anywhere-accessible digital workspace that simplifies clinician workflows, reduces administrative burdens, and helps enhance patient care. By enabling clinicians to access patient information securely using the right device, collaborate with specialists, and interact with patients remotely, Dell’s solutions transform care delivery and improve responsiveness and efficiency on the business side of healthcare.

Specifically, a persona-centric approach from Dell Technologies tailors technology solutions to the specific needs of different healthcare roles. This includes aligning hardware configurations, application delivery, security measures, and support levels to the unique requirements of each user group. The Dell Unified Workspace exemplifies this approach, providing a modernized endpoint environment that integrates seamlessly with existing systems to deliver an optimized user experience. Additionally, Dell’s solutions offer advanced threat protection with the industry’s most secure commercial PCs, ensuring data protection and compliance of sensitive patient information. With expanded customer choice, automation, and actionable insights, Dell Technologies supports healthcare organizations in adopting an APEX PC as a service model, enhancing efficiency, and enabling a remote and hybrid workforce. By extending digital workspaces beyond hospital walls, Dell ensures that patient care can be delivered effectively wherever it is needed.

If you are attending #Breakthroughs24, be sure to stop by Booth #1411 to learn more about the solutions and services Connection has to offer healthcare systems to revolutionize patient care. Visit www.connection.com/healthcare to learn more.

Bob Acosta joined Connection in 2020 as the Senior Vertical Alliances Manager, working within our Industry Solutions Group, and is responsible for managing Connection’s key Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) relationships. Bob has more than twenty years of experience within healthcare and GPOs. Prior to joining Connection, Bob was National Director of Sales at ecfirst, focused on direct and channel partner sales and marketing efforts for healthcare cybersecurity engagements concentrating on HIPAA, HITRUST CSF, and NIST CSF.

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