Jewish Healthcare Basis helps pilot challenge for nursing dwelling in Pennsylvania to remodel the care mannequin

PITTSBURGH – (BUSINESS WIRE) – The Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Project, with support from the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF), will test and validate a better care model for the most frail nursing home residents in the Commonwealth. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the clinical, financial, social, emotional, and infection control vulnerabilities of our current facilities to residents and workers. The urgency to learn from a pandemic that resulted in the deaths of over 184,000 residents and long-term care workers became evident. The project will re-examine a care model that proved successful in the 1980s: a “teaching nursing home” environment where students, faculty and health care workers work together to improve care for residents. The contemporary model gives researchers the opportunity to experiment and improve nursing methods, and encourage students to careers in nursing homes and geriatrics.

To launch the pilot in three partnerships in nursing homes for teachers in Pennsylvania, Health Careers Futures, an operating division of JHF, received three grants totaling $ 974,110 from JHF, the John A. Hartford Foundation, and the Henry L. Hillman Foundation .

The partnerships will provide existing skilled nurses with clinical, training, research and quality improvement support, and build a critical bridge between bedside care and academic innovation and clinical expertise. With improved opportunities to learn firsthand and in a real-life setting, students and staff will improve their clinical skills while improving the functioning and health of seniors. The project leaders assume that the results of the pilot project will provide a better model for the continuous improvement of clinical quality and safety in long-term care.

The pilot will involve key academic partners at the nursing schools at Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh.

“The pandemic has shown us how many ways we have failed to properly integrate nursing homes into the continuum of nursing and nursing education,” said Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, president of the John A. Hartford Foundation. “This program, which previously showed positive results without the benefits of the Internet, can now be revisited with these world-class nursing schools.”

The project begins July 1, 2021 and will run in three regions of Pennsylvania (East, Central, and West) through 2023. The three funding organizations have a common interest in improving care for nursing home residents and in supporting the current and future need for skilled workers in nursing homes. The project will leverage existing resources from the John A. Hartford Foundation’s Age-Friendly Health Systems Initiative and JHF’s Full Court Press Senior Residential Living Team, while incorporating lessons learned from implementing the Teaching Nursing Home in the 1980s (originally supported by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

“While the past fifteen months have been extremely difficult for long-term care, it has produced a number of natural experiments that have shown that there are creative, innovative ideas in the field that are worth further scrutiny and investigation. These efforts will provide a research and pilot platform for what we believe to be helpful approaches to improving the quality of life in long-term care, ”added David K. Roger, President of the Henry L. Hillman Foundation.

“The pandemic tragedy in nursing homes has drawn attention to the serious challenges facing our nursing industry, which has been built up for decades. We are proud to bring together a coalition of funding, academic and health system partners to test a new approach in our Commonwealth, ”said Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD, President and CEO of JHF and Health Careers Futures. “Inspirational examples like Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston have shown the positive impact on patients and staff in an educational nursing home model. We believe this pilot could help pave the way for better long-term care across the country. ”

About the Jewish Healthcare Foundation

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) and its three operational arms – the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI), Health Careers Futures (HCF), and the Women’s Health Activist Movement Global (WHAMglobal) – offer a unique brand of active philanthropy to advance healthcare Innovation, advocacy, collaboration and education for better health of the population. For more information, see jhf.org.

Via the John A. Hartford Foundation

The John A. Hartford Foundation, based in New York City, is a private, non-partisan philanthropy dedicated to improving the care of older adults. The foundation, established in 1929, has three main areas: creating age-appropriate health systems, supporting family care and improving care for serious illnesses and at the end of life. For more information, visit www.johnahartford.org and follow @johnahartford.

Via the Henry L. Hillman Foundation

The Henry L. Hillman Foundation’s mission is to inspire, invest in, and use great ideas and initiatives to produce results that improve the quality of life in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania. Promoting healthy aging is a new focus of the foundation. More information is available at www.hillmanfamilyfoundations.org.

About the future of the health professions

Health Careers Futures (HCF) is a not-for-profit branch of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation that focuses on the regional supply and demand of health workers. HCF works with all stakeholders to attract, support, and retain healthcare professionals and to contribute to long-term regional economic development in Southwest Pennsylvania. More information is available at hcfutures.org.