Organization Profile
Jewish Healthcare Foundation
Organization Overview
Background and Mission
The Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) is a grantmaking organization formed from the sale of Pittsburgh’s Montefiore Hospital. It is the parent organization for two operating entities: the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) and Health Careers Futures (HCF). Together, these entities work to improve the delivery of health care, the education and preparation of healthcare professionals to deliver high value care, and the policy environment that supports performance excellence in Western Pennsylvania, state-wide, in the U.S. and internationally. Their collective mission is to produce systems of care that are as perfectly safe, reliable, efficient, and compassionate as possible. JHF entities are the recipients of significant national grants to test better methods of healthcare delivery. In particular, its programs and projects advance, and then test, solutions to the quality problems in health care by:
• educating or coaching health professionals to use quality improvement methods,
• demonstrating better methods of delivering care,
• measuring, analyzing, and reporting on the outcomes of care, or
• advancing evidence-based solutions through policy advocacy.
PRHI is one of the first Regional Health Improvement Collaboratives (RHICs) in the country, and serves as a neutral convener of key stakeholders who want to champion health reforms that are proven and substantive. PRHI has been a thought leader in health reform in the U.S. and abroad and has promoted a vision of a high performing healthcare system that has been featured in numerous publications and presentations.
HCF was formed to help align the supply, demand, and capacity of the workforce to deliver high quality, safe health care. It focuses both on developing the pipeline for the healthcare workforce through its Fellowship programs, and supporting the continuing development of the existing workforce through its Champions programs and training offerings.
Sharing key staff, JHF, PRHI, and HCF are built on the belief that value begins at the frontline of care. Organization-wide values promote the preparation of frontline champions and coaches who are embedded in organizations and lead change internally. It is reasonable to say that the business of the collective is eliciting, spreading, and selling improvement ideas—face to face, online, in print, and through other media. PRHI and HCF coaches and trainers have trained thousands of workers across the U.S. and abroad. The teaching team is supported by communications, project management, and research teams. Overall, this work is recorded in two books, numerous publications, articles, presentations, and videos (the Teachable Moments series: http://www.prhi.org/success-stories/teachable-moments).
Organization History
The Jewish Healthcare Foundation was established in 1990 with proceeds from the sale of Montifiore Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA.
JHF spent its early years seeking areas of involvement that were timey, neglected, or opportune, such as promoting childhood vaccines, providing indigent care, counseling AIDS patients, advancing breast cancer awareness, developing a kosher food pantry, and other programs. In its first decade, JHF etablished a special focus on issues related to aging, women's health, and comprehensive primary care that has persisted.
But soon JHF discovered a unique mission -- to create a new vision, a new method, and a regional collaborative to address the healthcare system's greatest failing: the lack of reliable best clinical practices, patient safety, and efficiencies. The goal was to save lives, improve outcomes of care, and remove waste and error.
In 1997, the Allegheny Conference endorsed the consortium thta became the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative. The founders were Paul O'Neil, then CEO of ALCOA, and JHF President and CEO Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD. Safety was a natural first target for PRHI, and it spearheaded numerous efforts which dramatically improved safety and reduced costs. PRHI developed its own curriculum for healthcare quality improvement based on the Toyota system, and has trained thousands of healthcare professionals across the world. PRHI's mission grew continually to include readmissions reduction, payment reform, and much more.
In 2001, JHF sponsored a Pittsburgh regional health workforce summit; and in 2003 launched Health Careers Futures to address impending shortages in certain healthcare professions identified during the summit. At the core of HCF are several fellowships designed to build the healthcare workforce of the future.
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Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
JHF is a foundation with two operating arms. The Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) is a regional healthcare quality improvement collaborative, much of our work supported by grants from the federal government, primarily CMS and AHRQ, state government, and other foundations. Last fiscal year our grant support totalled almot $50 million.
In March 2013, PRHI was certified by CMS to receive medicare claims data for public reporting to help consumers in Western Pennsylvania make better decisions about their providers. We are only the seventh organization across the country to be so designated.
For more information, please visit www.prhi.org, www.jhf.org, and www.hcfutures.org