In the first four years of the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project operated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Improvement (CMS) and Premier, Inc., HQID hospitals improved their composite quality scores by 17.2 percent across five clinical areas. If every hospital were able to replicate this level of performance, an estimated $4.5 billion and 70,000 lives would be saved each year, according to CMS and Premier.