Royal Philips, S.C. Healthcare Provider Partner to Improve Patient Monitoring

Royal Philips and Medical University of South Carolina Health (MUSC Health), the clinical enterprise of Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), have forged an eight-year, $36 million strategic partnership to transform and improve patient monitoring for more than 1 million patients annually. The strategic partnership is based on an enterprise-managed services model through which Philips will install, integrate, and manage patient monitoring systems (including consumables) and software, as well as providing maintenance, training, and consulting services within a structured monthly payment model.
 
Serving patients across South Carolina and beyond through four hospital facilities in Charleston and more than 100 outreach sites, MUSC is now the fifth long-term, strategic partnership for Philips in North America. As hospital systems move from volume-based to value-based care, long-term, strategic partnerships are becoming the business model of choice for hospitals and health systems to better manage the cost and complexity of their technology investments, while expanding quality access to advanced medical care for their communities.
 
Philips develops patient monitoring systems and software, with more than 275 million patients monitored by Philips systems annually. Through this long-term, strategic partnership, Philips will provide MUSC Health with continuous access to standardized, current-state patient monitoring technology, implementation, and asset management services. This approach helps MUSC to implement standardized clinical practice based on defined monitoring configurations and enable integration and interoperability with other clinical IT systems. Moreover, MUSC will have better collection and management of patient data in order to provide more informed, proactive diagnostic and treatment services, helping to reduce complications, adverse events, length of stay, and readmissions.
 
“We want to give our staff, learners, and patients access to the best patient monitoring technologies in order to deliver on the highest quality, safest, and most reliable healthcare through the use of Phillips patient monitoring equipment across our entire enterprise,” said Patrick J. Cawley, M.D., CEO, MUSC Health. “As one of the leading academic health centers in the country, whose value proposition is transforming expertise, learning and discovery into unrivaled patient-centered care in every setting, partnering with Philips will help us to meet our goal of delivering an exceptional patient care experience.”
 
Long-term, strategic partnership models are well established globally and have demonstrated significant productivity improvements for pioneering Philips partners including Royal Belfast and Ashford St. Peters, and the New Karolinska Solna (NKS) hospital in Sweden. In less than a year, Philips has signed four long-term, strategic partnerships in North America including Westchester Medical Center Health Network (15-year term); Mackenzie Health (18-year term); and Marin General Hospital (15-year term).
 
“Due to a growing aging population and the rising number of people with chronic diseases, healthcare providers are seeking more cost-effective ways to monitor, diagnose, and treat patients,” said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. “As the healthcare industry is evolving, long-term, strategic partnerships are becoming the business model of choice, allowing health systems to address value-based models and keep pace with technology, while improving the patient experience. Together, Philips and MUSC can offer patients access to more than a century of experience in healthcare innovation and deliver an exceptional patient experience and quality care, while managing the rising healthcare costs.”
 
MUSC is a top academic health science center, encompassing a 750-bed medical center (MUSC Health) and six colleges. Its campus is located on more than 80 acres in Charleston, with an overall population of about 13,000 clinicians, faculty, and staff, including nearly 3,000 students in six colleges (Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy).