Pittsburgh—PRHI Leaders for Healthcare Reform*

More than 80 Pennsylvania corporations, health systems, insurers, government, consumer and labor organizations met in March to endorse and discuss Federal Health and Human Services’ (HHS) four cornerstones for a value-driven healthcare system. The cornerstones call for measuring and publishing information about:

1) cost; and

2) quality;

3) electronic health information systems; and

4) preference of health plan purchasers for high quality healthcare providers.

The Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative (PRHI), featured in the PBS documentary Good News…How Hospitals Health Themselves, is one of eight Community Leaders supporting the HHS program. The documentary explains how the collaborating PRHI hospitals in southwest Pennsylvania learned to make continual quality improvements leading to cost and waste reduction, better clinical outcomes and patient safety, renewed working lives for doctors and nurses and an improving bottom line.

The need for change continues at crisis level: Healthcare costs in this region rose an estimated 6.6% last year, double the rate of inflation. The cost of employer-sponsored health benefits has gone up by 87% in the past 6 years, to more than $11,000 per family. The proportion of companies offering benefits has declined from 69% to 61%.

* From PRHI Executive Summary, March/April 20l07 (www.prhi.org)