News

Each year the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP) recognizes the most innovative Pennsylvania hospitals through its annual Achievement Awards program. This year, a panel representing public and private sectors, health care and business organizations, and for-profit and nonprofit entities selected two programs at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC (WPIC) from 121 entries for awards.

Community Champions Award.  Dr. Kim Blair and her colleagues at the Matilda Theiss Early Childhood Behavioral Health Center were honored for their initiative, Improving Access to Early Childhood Mental Health and Trauma Treatment Services. The program serves Pittsburgh's Oak Hill, Hill District, and Mt. Oliver neighborhoods. It has demonstrated significant reductions in hyperactivity, aggression, anxiety, and depression in children, through parent-child interaction therapy, where the focus is on enhancing the parent-child relationship and decreasing disruptive behaviors, and child-parent psychotherapy, where caregiver and child work together to heal from trauma.  A key component of this intervention also involves being a collaborative partner in the community. Working relationships have been formed with more than 70 community partners to increase access throughout the region for children and families.

Excellence in Care Award.  Blending Innovative Technology in Routine Clinical Care: Improving Mutual Decision Making and Individualized Treatment in the Psychiatric Hospital Setting, based in the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Spectrum Services (In-CABS) program at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC (WPIC), received this year's  Excellence in Care Award. Rasim Somer Diler, MD, medical director of the In-CABS team, developed an innovative self-report mood rating, "Mood and Energy Thermometer: MET" that patients on the inpatient unit access through an interactive projector to enter their individual mood, anger, and anxiety ratings. Alerts from the web-based platform flag high score ratings to the treatment team and families. Adolescents on the unit also wear wrist-based devices that allow their activity to be mapped with the mood ratings.  The results from the project have been strong, suggesting that technology can be successfully blended in routine psychiatric care. Patients reported that their outlook on life increased 332 percent after using the tracking. Additionally, the In-CABS program helped clarify diagnosis in 100 percent of patients and 30-day readmissions were only 4 percent compared to the national average of 15 percent.

Congratulations to the faculty and staff of these innovative programs on their receipt of these awards.