What the Doctor Ordered

An international health reform movement is starting to take shape, according to Karen Wolk Feinstein, President and CEO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation in Pittsburgh, PA. This trend towards global improvements in healthcare was particularly evident during the foundation’s recent study mission to Israel from March 30 to April 5, she said.

While in Israel, members of the 18 year-old foundation – the first healthcare foundation of its kind in the US – had the unique opportunity to participate in a host of face-to-face meetings with Israeli healthcare experts at the forefront of the nation’s cutting-edge developments in medical care.

Created in 1990 with foundation money that remained after Pittsburgh’s Montefiore Jewish Hospital closed down, the organization functions as a think tank, provides teaching and training and also operates programs, including the Pittsburgh Health Initiative, which works to make the health system safer and more efficient.

According to Feinstein, America’s healthcare is lagging in efficiency and has a lot to learn from Israel’s integrated healthcare system. One of the goals of the mission was to learn more about how American systems can adopt new organizational models, based on ones being used in Israel.

After meeting with health funds, such as Maccabi and Clalit, she felt there was “an easy vindication that there are things you can do much more effectively when you have a system that’s really a system and not a lot of disconnected parts.”

Cliff Shannon, the foundation’s Chief Communications Officer, also remarked on the fruitful atmosphere generated during the mission’s sessions with Israeli health funds. “When the doors closed, we were able to truly share experiences.”

Although the group spent hours daily in discussion sessions with Israeli experts, the collective interest level was so high that the mission participants – who included Pittsburgh area physicians, those working in aging services, a medical ethicist and individuals interested in education reform – were riveted throughout. Feinstein and Shannon saw that – in part – as a function of the foundation’s special relationship with the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee/ Myers JDC-Brookdale, mission partners together with United Jewish Communities. The groups share many interests and are currently working together on several projects.

As she reflected on the various sessions with the JDC, Feinstein commented on the impressive “dichotomy” within the organization. “You have the Joint’s international staff who get themselves in gear whatever it takes, improvise and get the job done and then you have Brookdale, a large and awesome think tank of some of the best and brightest in careful research and evaluation,” she explained.

Both faces of the JDC had a place on the itinerary. In Pittsburgh’s sister region of Karmiel, the group visited JDC supported programs such as YUVAL (Helping the Helpers) which provides organizational consulting services to volunteer-based emergency service organizations. Later on in the mission, they also had two sessions at Jerusalem’s Brookdale Institute, including one about End-of-Life care, a shared area of interest.

Another itinerary highlight was a presentation by dbMotion, a premier provider of healthcare information integration software that, according to Feinstein, “is becoming an answer to America’s woes.” Already in place at UPMC in Pittsburgh, the technology facilitates interoperability and health information exchange so caregivers can get necessary information in a secure and timely manner.

Yet for the Pittsburgh health professionals, the mission was certainly not all work and no play. Alongside information sessions and networking opportunities, they toured extensively in locales such as Safed, Caesarea, Jerusalem and Masada.

Particularly fun for the participants was an evening at the Cana’an Spa in the North, complete with a moonlight dip in the pool: “We had a grand old time,” said Feinstein. “Kathy [Ozery] and Dorit [Krongold] folded it all in very nicely – a little of this and a little of that,” she added.