Allegheny Health Network
Allegheny Health Network, based in Pittsburgh, is a non-profit, 14-hospital academic medical system with facilities located in Western Pennsylvania and one hospital in Western New York. AHN was formed in 2013 when Highmark Inc., a Pennsylvania-based Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance carrier, purchased the assets of the West Penn Allegheny Health System and added three more hospitals to its provider division. Allegheny Health Network was formed to act as the parent company to the WPAHS hospitals and its affiliate hospitals. Highmark Health today serves as the ultimate parent of AHN.
Today, AHN consists of an academic hospital and transplant center, five tertiary-care hospitals, four community hospitals, and four "neighborhood hospitals." The network cares for patients from western Pennsylvania and the adjacent regions of Ohio, West Virginia, New York and Maryland at more than 250 clinical locations, including six “Health + Wellness Pavilions,” cancer clinics, surgical centers, outpatient clinics, and primary care locations.
The system includes the AHN Research Institute, the Allegheny Clinic, a home health and infusion company, a group-purchasing organization, LifeFlight, and the STAR Center, which provides simulation training for medical, nursing, and other health care professionals. The network operates two nursing schools, and serves as a clinical campus for the medical schools of Duquesne University, Drexel University and Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine. AHN also operates one of the nation's largest graduate medical education programs, and its teaching hospitals annually train about 500 medical residents and fellows in 48 accredited programs and specialties.
As of 2024, AHN employs approximately 23,000 people, with over 2,600 employed and affiliated physicians, plus 2,000 volunteers. In 2022, AHN's facilities admitted and / or observed 120,000 patients, logged 340,000 emergency room visits, recorded 3.6 million physician visits, and delivered 8,600 babies.
Facilities
AHN Wexford Hospital
AHN Wexford is a 160-bed, $313 million, 345,000-square-foot hospital built along Route 19, north of Pittsburgh. Opened in the fall of 2021, AHN Wexford is the network's newest full-service hospital, and includes a 24-bed emergency department, operating rooms with minimally invasive robotic surgery capabilities; a cardiac catheterization lab and hybrid OR for advanced surgical procedures; a short-stay observation unit; an adult intensive care unit; and comprehensive women's and infants' care.The women's unit includes the only labor and delivery unit based in northern Allegheny County, as well as high-risk obstetrical services and a Level II neonatal intensive care unit. In 2023, the hospital expanded its pediatric capabilities to include inpatient pediatric care.
AHN Allegheny General Hospital
Now the academic flagship of Allegheny Health Network, Allegheny General Hospital began as a 50-bed infirmary, housed in two adjoining brick rowhouses in what was then Allegheny City, immediately north of Pittsburgh. While Pittsburgh itself had already established several hospitals, including West Penn Hospital, by the 1870s, Allegheny City needed one of its own to accommodate its burgeoning population and to care for the victims of fires, floods and disease outbreaks that often swept over the Ohio River's northern bank. Starting in 1881, the mayor of Allegheny City began meeting with a committee of physicians and prominent residents of Allegheny City, to discuss the construction of, and fund-raising for, a new North Side hospital. Three years later, the committee bought two adjacent properties along Stockton Avenue, near the modern-day Nova Place.The hospital was officially chartered in 1882 and on Feb. 15, 1886, the forerunner to Allegheny General Hospital opened its doors. In 1887, the hospital established a children's wing, and in 1889, an ambulance was donated to the hospital; AGH would operate its own ambulance service for the next 64 years. A hospital annex was opened in June 1892, giving AGH additional surgical space. At the turn of the century, the hospital's directors began collecting funds for a new AGH, to be built just a block away, also along Stockton Avenue. The seven-story, 400-bed facility cost $620,000, and opened in 1904. The new space included more modern laboratory facilities: separate rooms for urinalysis, blood work, bacteriology, and autopsies. Within the decade, the hospital's board president, Dr. Maitland Alexander, convinced the kin of steel magnate William H. Singer to build a new, three-story research laboratory behind the hospital, which opened in 1916 and would later be known as the Singer Research Institute. Like many hospitals of that era, AGH distinguished itself during wartime; AGH was among the first medical institutions in the country to offer its services to the U.S. Department of War during WWI, and in 1918, the AGH Red Cross Unit made its way from Pittsburgh to Bourbonne-les-Bains, France, where a complement of AGH employees manned a French military hospital.
Back home, Allegheny City and Pittsburgh continued to grow, and with the Stocktown Avenue AGH hemmed in by railroad tracks, the hospital board again looked for a location to build a new hospital. They found one 2,000 feet to the north. New York architecture firm York and Sawyer was hired to draw plans for what would be one of the nation's first “skyscraper” hospitals, and by 1929, construction was underway. The cornerstone was laid in 1930, and the plastering was almost finished by 1931. The Great Depression interrupted construction, but the U.S. Public Works Administration loaned AGH the $2 million that it needed to complete the project, and on June 24, 1936, the third iteration of Allegheny General Hospital was formally dedicated. The 22-story, $8 million hospital had 1,300 separate rooms, including 162 private patient rooms. Built in the Lombard architectural style, the cream-brick tower was an instant landmark structure, visible for miles; the high rise is now designated a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation historic landmark. The new hospital featured multiple kitchens, a pediatric wing, maternity wards, an x-ray department and a cardiology department; pneumatic tubes, call boxes and a state-of-the-art phone system helped hospital employees communicate.
In the decades that followed World War II, the hospital continued to expand and build, adding a new East Wing, and in 1981, a new inpatient tower, the $104 million Snyder Pavilion. AGH also continued to push the boundaries of medicine and research in those decades, particularly in the areas of thoracic surgery, shock trauma care, cancer treatment, orthopaedic surgery, organ transplants and, most notably, open-heart surgery. Built on the foundation laid by world renowned surgical pioneer George Magovern, by 1998, AGH was performing more than 1,500 open-heart procedures annually, the largest volume of any hospital in the state, serving patients from across the country and around the world. Today, Allegheny General is a 552-bed quaternary care and educational hospital, and it is AHN's highest-volume hospital, seeing 24,000 inpatient admissions, 23,000 surgeries, and nearly 56,000 emergency department visits each year. Over the last five years, AGH has invested in a new orthopaedic center, a new cardiovascular intensive care unit, a new cardiac MRI center, new hybrid operating rooms, an ambulatory surgery center and some of the world's most technologically advanced surgical robots.
In 2020, a new academic cancer center opened on the AGH campus.
In the early 1980s, AGH's directors created a nonprofit holding company, called the Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation, to operate the hospital. That foundation ultimately collapsed in one of the nation's largest nonprofit bankruptcies.
AGH and AHN continue to own and operate AHN Suburban, a satellite campus in Bellevue, Pa., formerly known as Suburban General Hospital. Suburban General opened in Bellevue in 1904, and has been at its current South Jackson Avenue location since 1912. AHN's predecessor, West Penn Allegheny Health System, acquired the facility in 1994. In 2010, the hospital's inpatient units, surgical units, and emergency department closed, though the building continued to house administrative offices, an urgent care clinic, outpatient services, and a privately operated long-term care hospital. While AHN Suburban's urgent care clinic and outpatient clinics continue to operate, LifeCare Hospitals of Pittsburgh's nursing facility closed in June 2019.
Today, the AHN Suburban location serves as an innovation hub and health technology business incubator.
Relationship with 'The Pitt'
In 2024, it was announced that AGH would serve as the inspiration and visual backdrop for the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, the hospital featured in "The Pitt," an Emmy-winning medical procedural drama series produced by Warner Bros. Television and airing on HBO Max. The show is partially filmed at AGH, and at other outdoor locations near the hospital. In 2026, it was announced that The Pitt had been renewed for a third season.AHN Allegheny Valley Hospital
Allegheny Valley Hospital has served Natrona Heights, Pa., and the surrounding community for over 100 years. AVH has 188 licensed beds and provides emergency care, surgical care, rehabilitation care and other health care services for its patients. Like many of its Western Pennsylvania counterparts, Allegheny Valley Hospital was built to serve the region's flourishing industrial towns. By the late 1800s, industrial activity had reached the town of Tarentum, about 22 miles northeast of Pittsburgh and home to lumber and saw mills, steel mills, brick kilns, and several plate glass factories. Serious injuries were a daily occurrence, but without a hospital, many patients were sent by train to a hospital in Pittsburgh. In 1906 a committee of doctors and prominent area residents secured a charter for the establishment of what was then called the Allegheny Valley General Hospital. Under the leadership of Dr. George Getze, the committee leased a property along Tarentum's Second Avenue, and the hospital was open for business on Jan. 28, 1909.It was a three-story home, with only 20 rooms available for patient visits and surgeries, and in 1910, the hospital was moved to its second location, a larger house along West Seventh Avenue, just downriver from the original home. This home, too, became quickly obsolete, and soon the hospital leaders agreed to buy a piece of land near the old Tarentum Fairground for $12,000.
The new 98-bed Natrona Heights hospital was dedicated on May 24, 1919. The three-story, brick and terra cotta structure remains standing today, at the center of what is now a much larger Allegheny Valley Hospital. In the century that has passed since the third AVH opened, the hospital has added to that original foundation, building a nurses wing in 1928, a north wing in 1943, a $2 million south wing in 1958, a laboratory in 1974, and a four-level, $26.5 million addition in 1983 that houses AVH's emergency department, radiology, and other units.
Today, AVH sees nearly 6,000 inpatient admissions and 40,000 emergency department visits, and performs 5,000 surgeries. In recent years, AVH had added new inpatient units, cardiac MRI and rehabilitation services, robotic surgery capabilities, and inpatient rehab services for patients who have sustained trauma or strokes. It primarily serves residents living in Northeastern Allegheny County, Westmoreland County, Armstrong County and Butler County.
For a decade in the early 2000s, AVH was formally known as the Alle-Kiski Medical Center. In 2011, the name reverted to Allegheny Valley Hospital. In 2000, AVH also affiliated with the nearby Citizens School of Nursing, which opened in 1913 and continues to educate nursing students today. In 2019, that nursing school moved to a new campus in Tarentum, in the Pittsburgh Mills mall.
AVH was an independent hospital through most of its history. In 1997, it was acquired by [|AHERF]. Following the bankruptcy of AHERF, AVH became an affiliate of West Penn Allegheny Health System. After WPAHS was acquired by Highmark Inc., AVH became an affiliate of the new Allegheny Health Network in 2013.