Kaiser Permanente Case Analysis

Electronic health records can lessen the disintegration of care by refining care coordination. The use of electronic health records will deliver providers with accurate information. This is especially important for those that see multiple specialists, and enable a smooth transition between care settings and receive treatment in emergency

The Case Management program is offered by Kaiser Permanente to support members with complex medical, psychosocial, and care management essentials. This specialized service is provided by case managers. The case managers are either Registered Nurses who are certified in case management or qualified Social Workers. Case managers provide necessary information and education to promote understanding, reduce the chance of possible complications, and facilitate effective and proper delivery of care and services.

Performance Management at Intermountain Healthcare Key Points   Operational focus - strategy rather than management. How will the organization prepare for the future if their primary customer (government) reduces spending? How will they address decreasing revenues caused by their increasing effiencies?

For the last five weeks research has been done on Kaiser Permanente, an organization that contains Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Groups in eight regions. Since its inception in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has become the largest not-for-profit, integrated health care delivery system in the United States, serving 8.6 million members in eight regions: Northern and Southern California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, the Mid-Atlantic States, Ohio, and the Northwest. About three quarters of the members are in California, the organization’s birthplace. It is the largest nonprofit integrated health care delivery system in the United States. Its mission is to provide affordable, high-quality health care services to improve the health of their members and the communities they serve. For the purpose of this research, focus will be on Northern California in a randomly selected hospital.

Kaiser Permanente is a large nonprofit integrated healthcare plan. This organization serves a tremendous amount of patients all over the United States with more than 38 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices. They offer medical care from chronic care visits to deliveries and prescription refills ("Who We Are - Kaiser Permanente," n.d.) Kaiser Permanente conducts campaigns to spread their care knowledge to others. They perform sick care, prevention care, and treatment for those who need it.

Kaiser Permanente is a managed care facility that provides services across the health care continuum. Over the years the organization has continually made efforts toward improvements since it was first founded in 1945. These improvements generate a series of successes that set Kaiser apart from similar organizations. But, just as any health care delivery system, Kaiser has faced challenges in the past, present and may continue to do so in the future. In this paper I will explain what attributes to the success of Kaiser Permanente and some of the challenges they face.

As a managed care organization Kaiser Permanente has served as a model for informational healthcare systems and the recent demand for affordable care has prompted the organization to lower cost in services without hindering the quality of care. Kaiser Permanente has integrated a system in which the organization assumes all financial risk and a bundled enrollment fee for service strategy. What makes Kaiser Permanente unique from other HMOs is their accountability for quality, utilization management, financial risk, and business strategies (Kaiser Permanente, 2009).

Kaiser Permanente s a company that was registered to deliver healthcare services to individuals who are geographically distributed. The organization is dedicated to increasing the medical quality for its members and their immediate environment. The firm has been operating for sixty years, it evolved from programs that were operating in the industrial sector especially shipyards, construction, and steel mill workers in the late 1930s (Kaiser, 2015). In 1945 it was opened for the enrolment of the public who wanted to get their services. The enterprise started with one surgeon and a hospital that had twelve beds in Mojave Desert. The managing director (MD), Sidney Garfield, observed the young people who were involved in different development projects. The MD took a loan to cater for his expenses as he started building the Project of Colorado River Aqueduct since he noticed an opportunity. As the operations begun, most individuals were not in a position of

The fundamental features of a managed health care organization such as Kaiser Permanente include; huge emphasis on preventive care to reduce use of services, risk sharing, the use of primary physicians and other health care providers, the comprehensive management of cases, achieving high quality care through programs and payment systems that make providers accountable for cost and quality of their services

Largest Electronic Health Record System- Besides giving members ultimately full access to their health records they are able to collect and analyze health data stored in the electronic health file. This gives any Kaiser physician access to the patient’s health records to evaluate, treat, and diagnose in an organized efficient manner. Also, this gives Kaiser the availability to flag high risk patients with chronic conditions that could otherwise fly under the radar. Giving the organization the ability to develop personalized care development plans and transitioning the patients to outpatient programs as needed.

Changes in current health care practices, the aging baby-boomer population, and the higher acuity of patients has created a need for change and adaptability with the health care industry. Kaiser is an organization who has shown the ability to continuously change in order to reduce costs while improving efficient quality patient care. The investment on information technology (IT) advancements such as the implantation of electronic health records (EHRs) and use of a patient portal system is one way the organization has shown readiness to meet the health care needs of patients. KP in collaboration with five other healthcare organizations created a Care Connectivity Consortium, enabling secure electronic retrieval of current

Maintaining an organization with industry-leading levels of diversity and inclusion is critical to fulfilling our mission, sustaining our business objectives, and providing the highest quality, affordable, and culturally competent care to our members and patients and the communities we serve.” ("Kaiser Permanente",

One way to see Kaiser is as both the health insurance and the healthcare provider. Kaiser has been cited as the face of the future of healthcare. In fact, its model, a combination of a nonprofit health insurance plan with its own physicians, medical offices and hospitals, has been mentioned and used by President Obama when creating healthcare reform (Abelson, 2013). As an open system, Kaiser Permanente is affected by many external factors, such as Medicare, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), the Division of Insurance and laws like the Healthcare Reform.

Success Of Kaiser Permanente Health Care Model And The Group Health Cooperative Model Of Health Care Compared To Other Initiatives In Health Care “Kaiser Permanente is America's leading integrated health care organization. Founded in 1945, it is a nonprofit, group-practice health maintenance organization (HMO) with headquarters in Oakland, California. Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of members in 9 states and the District of Columbia.” Today, it encompasses Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and the Permanente Medical Groups, as well as affiliation with Group Health Cooperative based in Seattle, Washington. Kaiser Permanente aspires to be the world leader in improving health through high-quality, affordable, integrated health care. We will be distinguished by our strong social purpose, physician responsibility for clinical care, and an enduring partnership between our Health Plan and our medical groups. Kaiser Permanente provides coverage programs for thousands of uninsured children and adults who are ineligible for existing state or private programs due to family income or immigration status. The organization also partners with community-based clinics to provide expertise, clinical guidelines, and other support for these safety-net providers. Through its research centers across the country, “Kaiser Permanente conducts more research, over 1,000 studies annually, than any other non-academic institution in the U.S.” The

Strategic Planning: Due to the current issues, both internally and externally, the organization is facing, Dr. Townsend is challenged to prepare an action plan to implement the proposed strategy needed to restore the organization back to financial health and improve the morale among the physicians and support staff. Another course of planning Dr. Townsend will challenge is the organizations old structure into a way that all patients will be satisfied.