Operating Arms

Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative

PRHI logoFounded in 1998 by the corporate community of Pittsburgh, and now functioning as an operating arm of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) is one of the nation's first regional multi-stakeholder collaboratives organized to address healthcare safety and quality improvement as a health and business imperative. PRHI’s core mission is to demonstrate that an unwavering focus on meeting patient needs, eliminating errors, and achieving optimal care outcomes with efficiency will create maximum value for the patient and for society.

To achieve its mission, PRHI developed its own process improvement methodology called Perfecting Patient CareSM (PPC). Based on Lean industrial engineering principles, PPC is a powerful method designed to drastically reduce the estimated 40% of healthcare spending that goes to waste, while guaranteeing safety and best practice medicine. In 2021, the impact of PPC stretches far and wide. Over 10,000 healthcare professionals have been trained in PPC throughout the world, from South Korea to the United Kingdom to Israel to twenty-eight states across the United States.

PRHI has guided efforts to reduce hospital-acquired infections, strengthen the skills of the healthcare workforce, and transform care delivery and payment through demonstration projects that smooth the transition for patients between medical and community settings and integrate physical and behavioral health care. Much of PRHI’s past work is detailed in the book, Moving Beyond Repair: Perfecting Health Care (March 2012). Moving Beyond Repair is a call for applying lean-based tools to full functionality in hospitals, physician practices, and nursing homes, in order to move beyond targeted problem-solving to transforming the way both organizations and healthcare systems achieve, spread and sustain value.  Most recently PRHI has ventured out of traditional healthcare settings to provide supports for community health programs, and it is set out to transform national healthcare safety policy through building a broad collation to create a new National Patient Safety Board.

PRHI supports organizations with a holistic, customized approach to practice transformation. Each project receives an “inside-out” approach inspired by each team’s goals. Overall PRHI aims to create organizations and practices that are infused with a culture of ongoing quality improvement. For more information, visit www.prhi.org.

Health Careers Futures

HCF

Health Careers Futures (HCF) was founded in 2003 to reimagine the healthcare workforce—from providing innovative training and coaching, to examining scope of work, to supporting emerging or entirely new professions.

HCF is an operating arm of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, and its mission is to align the supply and demand of workers in the regional healthcare industry by improving attraction, recruitment, and retention of quality healthcare workers, and by instituting research of relevant healthcare workforce issues. HCF advances this mission by offering multidisciplinary fellowships and internships for students and early-career professionals, creating Champions programs and ongoing skills training opportunities for workers across the care continuum, and accelerating policy and delivery reforms that unlock the full potential of our healthcare workforce.

In 2021, HCF is dually focused on developing a new model for senior residential living and a comprehensive approach to pregnancy and postpartum care that can both be furthered by new policies that will ultimately repair critical services for the public and transform workforces in senior living and women’s health.

For more information, visit www.hcfutures.org

Women’s Health Activist Movement Global (WHAMglobal)

WHAMglobalWomen’s Health Activist Movement Global (WHAMglobal), an operating arm of JHF, forms networks of advocates and experts in women’s healthto improve healthcare delivery, outcomes, equity, and leadership. WHAMglobal aims to inspire regional, national, and international action to advance women’s health, healthcare quality and safety, health professions workforce development, and pay equity. WHAMglobal believes transformational change requires an international network of women that can champion, fund, investigate, activate, and advocate for ideal childbirth. 

WHAMglobal is committed to uncovering and advancing creative, scalable ideas that tackle urgent women’s health issues. WHAMglobal is currently focused on reducing maternal mortality in the U.S. through a multi-pronged approach that includes unlocking the potential of community health workers to help mothers navigate complex medical and social services; endorsing new models of reimbursement for maternity care using a ‘bundled payment approach’ that allows funding for midwives and doulas and social supports; and forming a network of experts in maternal health care, research, policy, and advocacy.

For more information, visit www.whamglobal.org.