MUSC Health, Philips to Form Partnership for Patient Monitoring Transformation

Contact: Heather Woolwine
843-792-7669
woolwinh@musc.edu

May 19, 2016

CHARLESTON, SC & AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) and MUSC Health, the clinical enterprise of Medical University of South Carolina has announced an eight-year, $36 million (USD) strategic partnership to transform and improve patient monitoring for more than one million patients a year. 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 is a leader in 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 health care through the use of Philips 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, health care providers are seeking more cost-effective ways to monitor, diagnose, and treat patients,” said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips. “As the health care 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 health care innovation and deliver an exceptional patient experience and quality care, while managing the rising health care costs.”

MUSC is one of the nation’s top academic health science centers, with a 750-bed medical center (MUSC Health) and six colleges. As South Carolina’s only comprehensive academic health center providing a full range of programs in the biomedical sciences, MUSC is engaged in activities statewide. Its campus is located on more than 80 acres in the city of 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) studying for degrees at the baccalaureate, masters, doctoral, and other professional levels.

About MUSC

Founded in 1824 in Charleston, MUSC is the state's only comprehensive academic health system, with a unique mission to preserve and optimize human life in South Carolina through education, research and patient care. Each year, MUSC educates more than 3,200 students in six colleges – Dental Medicine, Graduate Studies, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy – and trains more than 900 residents and fellows in its health system. MUSC brought in more than $300 million in research funds in fiscal year 2023, leading the state overall in research funding. MUSC also leads the state in federal and National Institutes of Health funding. Learn more about our academic programs.

As the health care system of the Medical University of South Carolina, MUSC Health is dedicated to delivering the highest-quality and safest patient care while educating and training generations of outstanding health care providers and leaders to serve the people of South Carolina and beyond. Patient care is provided at 16 hospitals (includes owned or governing interest), with approximately 2,700 beds and four additional hospital locations in development, more than 350 telehealth sites and nearly 750 care locations situated in all regions of South Carolina. In 2023, for the ninth consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report named MUSC Health University Medical Center in Charleston the Number 1 hospital in South Carolina. Learn more about our patient services.

MUSC has a total enterprise annual operating budget of $5.9 billion. The nearly 26,000 MUSC family members include world-class faculty, physicians, specialty providers, scientists, students, affiliates and care team members who deliver groundbreaking education, research, and patient care.