JHF and PRHI to launch Tomorrow’s HealthCare

Web platform planned for healthcare process improvement training, research and peer support

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) and the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) plan to create a “virtual community” for clinicians engaged in healthcare process improvement.

JHF and PRHI, one of the Foundation’s operating arms, will launch a web platform featuring online training in their Toyota-based healthcare process improvement methods, the latest findings from demonstrations worldwide and peer support networks where doctors, nurses and administrators engaged in process improvement can exchange info rmation.

Pittsburgh-based CECity, the nation’s leading developer and provider of online continuing education and performance improvement technologies for healthcare professionals, will collaborate in launching the website, to be called Tomorrow’s HealthCare, and in developing additional tools and training packages. Jim Mitnick, a technology consultant who established the award-winning Turner Knowledge Network for Turner Construction, also will play a key role in the new venture.

“The pioneers of process improvement in health care need the latest info rmation as soon as it’s available, not a year or more afterward when it’s presented at conferences or published in peer-reviewed journals,” said Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of JHF and PRHI. “They also need to turn information from demonstrations in their specialties into curriculum to teach and inspire students and peers.”

JHF has committed $500,000 over two years to launch the web platform and DSF Charitable Foundation has joined the effort by committing to match JHF’s investment in the project by up to $1 million.

“We believe Tomorrow’s HealthCare holds tremendous promise and will constitute yet another way that JHF and PRHI remain at the forefront of efforts to improve quality and safety in health care,” said Nick Beldecos, Executive Director of DSF Charitable Foundation.

With support from JHF, PRHI began offering its Perfecting Patient Care^SM (PPC) curriculum for applying industrial process improvement methods in health care more than seven years ago. Adoption of these disciplines in health care still is not widespread.

“Process improvement in health care has been largely the work of passionate clinical leaders,” said Stephen Raab, MD, who has done groundbreaking work applying PPC/TPS principles in pathology. “Training in these methods still is not part of the established curriculum in medical and health professional schools.”

However, recent developments, including Medicare’s plans to withhold payment for certain errors and hospital-acquired infections, are beginning to increase demand for work redesign methods that enable clinicians and institutions to meet new standards of safety, quality and efficiency.

JHF and PRHI have offered fellowships to support “champions” of quality. The new web platform will help these champions expand their learning networks and advance JHF’s ongoing initiatives in healthcare quality reform. Education and training available on the site responds to the lifelong learning requirements health professionals must fulfill with continuing education credits.

Portals, maintained by gatekeepers and content developers for various medical specialties, will be added to the site over time. Specialties will be chosen based on process improvement areas in which JHF and PRHI have provided support, such as pathology.

Dr. Raab, who introduced PPC/Toyota methods at UPMC Shadyside Hospital ’s pathology lab, said the new web platform “will facilitate and strengthen working relationships between clinicians seeking to improve their specialties.”

Under a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Raab, who recently was named Pathology Vice Chairman at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, has worked on quality and process improvement in concert with pathologists at nine institutions across the country.

“My expectation is that Tomorrow’s HealthCare will stimulate more collaborations like ours and possibly accelerate the work we’re already doing,” he said.

“This is the way professionals increasingly interact and disseminate knowledge,” said Simone Karp, who heads business development at CECity. “The world is now flat, thanks to modern technology. People communicate across all boundaries. Given the time constraints facing busy healthcare professionals, and the growing pressures on providers and health systems to improve quality, the need to rapidly access information that can help directly improve their performance becomes critical.

Performance improvement programs and continuing medical education credits also are gradually becoming a required part of continuing professional development for physicians and other allied health professionals. Pennsylvania requires courses in risk management, for example, and national medical boards require many physicians to complete performance improvement programs to maintain their board certification. Programs offered on Tomorrow’s HealthCare will be designed to streamline access to these needs.

CECity was selected to support the planned website based upon its award winning technology and its decade of experience in hosting healthcare-related continuing education.

“CECity’s expertise and Jim Mitnick’s experience will enable us to move quickly to begin serving needs in the process improvement niche,” said Dr. Feinstein.

The network Mr. Mitnick established at Turner serves as the company’s fulcrum for professional development. It also enables subcontractors and partners to access tools and information Turner sees as crucial to their work.

Tomorrow’s HealthCare is expected to draw additional grants and eventually to support itself with revenue generated from online process improvement training and from support of continuing education and continuing medical education courses.