Creating A Better Quality of Life Throughout The Region
Allegheny Health Network, Excela Health, Saint Clair Health Corporation:
Joining the Infant Mortality Project
Three hospital systems have expressed interest in participating in the ongoing efforts to decrease infant mortality in southwestern Pennsylvania: Allegheny Health Network (AHN), Excela Health, and Saint Clair Health Corporation.
AHN, the second-largest health care provider in the region, strives to create remarkable health experiences for individuals and families. The award-winning network of hospitals, surgery centers, health and wellness pavilions, and more than 250 locations for care, boasts the region's fastest growing labor and delivery program, which, in 2018, delivered more than 7,700 babies and includes new, state-of-the-art Level III neonatal intensive care units at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh and at Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie, as well as Level II units at Forbes Hospital in Monroeville and at Jefferson Hospital in Clairton. From 2018 to 2019, 531 premature babies were born at AHN hospitals, and an additional 139 fetal and neonatal deaths were reported.
Excela Health seeks to improve the health and well-being of every life it touches. As the leading provider of advanced medical care in Westmoreland County, Excela's three hospitals and health care affiliates, together with its 735 physicians and allied health professionals in 35 clinical specialties, work to meet the needs of individuals in Westmoreland, northern Fayette, and southern Indiana counties. Approximately half of the 3,000 babies born in Westmoreland County annually are delivered at Westmoreland Hospital in Greensburg, the only birth hospital in the county. As a member of an accountable-care organization of community hospitals surrounding Allegheny County, Excela's participation in the infant mortality project could, in the future, include hospitals in Butler, Beaver, and Washington.
St. Clair Hospital, an independent, 328-bed acute care medical center in Mt. Lebanon with satellite locations in Bethel Park and Peters Township, opened in 1954 and is the fastest growing hospital in the market. It has received awards for the quality of its care, patient satisfaction, patient safety, innovation, and the use of electronic medical records to improve patient care, which is particularly relevant to the work the Foundation is supporting relative to infant mortality. St. Clair's family birth center is the third largest labor and delivery unit in western Pennsylvania, with 1,500 deliveries in the hospital in 2018. It operates a Level II neonatal intensive care unit staffed by in-house pediatricians 24 hours a day. During the past three years, as many as 8.5 percent of deliveries (131 babies) have led to NICU admissions.
A separate $100,000 grant from the Foundation to each of these hospital systems will enable the team that comprises MWRI, the laboratory at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the RAND Corporation, and Stanford University to validate their predictive analytics model against data from each network as it relates to technology, implementation, and staffing and to integrate the various hospitals and satellite and affiliated sites into the infant mortality project.