Kaiser Permanente : Largest Integrated Healthcare Delivery Systems

Today, health care is one of the most the important subjects in United States. There are many Private and nonprofitmaking organization dedicated to health care. This paper discusses the readiness of Kaiser Permanente as a health care organization to respond the future health care needs of citizens. This paper also contains its strategic plan that addresses issues relating to network growth, nurse staffing, resource management and patient satisfaction.

Reinvest current net income into interest accounts for future variable health care costs for years to come

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.

In the health care business, there are certain standards and laws that have been put in place to protect our patients and their personal health information. When a health care facility fails to protect their patient’s confidential information, the US Government may get involved and facilities may be forced to pay huge sums of money in fines, and risk damaging their reputation.

Partners HealthCare is a non-profit, health system located in Boston that created a data based transformation (Davenport, 2013). It integrated a new system that aligned the participating organizations to cohesively run as one and to help shape the future of the organization. The system didn’t stop there as it was responsible for bettering the patient financing experience and the delivery of healthcare information to other organizations (Davenport, 2013). The initial goal of the organization was making patient care more affordable and accountable by providing integrated, evidence based, patient-oriented care.

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.

For example, if you had shoulder pain, you could see an orthopedic specialist the very same day with no visit to a general practitioner. The consolidation of insurance and care is characteristic of Kaiser Permanente in the United States, however being a private company and smaller than a national system, they are forced to require the general practitioner as a middleman to presumably control unnecessary visits. Another system Taiwan has in place is the “Smart Card” the card is carried by every citizen and allows a physician to pull up a complete patient history and bill the government insurance. Additionally this system can track abuse of visits and have a member of the Bureau of National Health Insurance visit the abuser, a system that the Taiwanese people are satisfied with. Kaiser Permanente has a similar system in place that allows any Kaiser physician to look up a complete patient history, stored on secure databases. However, as previously stated the general practitioner is used in Kaiser to prevent the abuse of services as that is the only realistic solution, but is fortunately not too restricting. Based upon my experience as a Kaiser patient, once you are established with a specialist, you may schedule an appointment without any gatekeeper interference. This just shows the similarities of Kaiser Permanente to a nationalized system and that the Kaiser model is one that can be successful on a large scale.

During this research, there has been a collection of data that had been connected to the instances of HIPAA violations within the United States. There are various cases that have been reported through patients and employees where very personal medical information has been exposed unlawfully for personal gain. These cases have not only put a company at reputational risk. But these cases can also place a patient and or healthcare company in a terrible financial stipulation. This thesis will include a series of charts and tables that describe the fluctuation of such cases involving different examples of HIPAA violations. Not only will there be data of these instances but there will be illustrations of how both patients and healthcare employees exemplify HIPAA violations. These cases will be verified from an external and internal evaluation. Suggestive protocol will be demonstrated to guide one along to ensure the possibility of another case of HIPAA violation is prevented. Protocols and examples are being credited by diverse information.

Identifying the significant breach of confidentially, Kaiser Permanente immediately offered apologies to the affected members, and launched a crisis task force to conduct a root-cause analysis. Within three days of the breach, Kaiser Permanente informed its’ members and issued a press release.

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

Kaiser Permanente is a health system which serves over eight million members in nine states and the District of Columbia. In the 1990’s the KP Northern California region created an Internet Patient Portal known as “Kaiser Permanente Online” (KP Online)(Wager, 2009). KP Online provides members access to request appointments and prescription refills, obtain health information, and receive medical advice from staff.

Kaiser Permanente (KP) was founded in California in 1945. It is one of the largest non-profit healthcare organizations in the United States, made up of three entities: the Kaiser Foundation Hospital, the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and the Permanente Medical Groups. It currently serves about 9.1 members within the following states: California, Colorado, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Georgia. With a few exceptions, it mostly operates under a managed care model, owning the physician network and the facilities its members use to receive medical services (Fast Facts, 2013).

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

• What practices led to the security breach in TJX and why did such a smart andprofitable organization as TJX face such a situation?

The department of Health and Human Services protects and guides the health and well being of individuals here in America (Thacker, 2014). They fulfill these duties providing Americans with adequate and efficient health and human services and monitoring services designed to increase the efficiency of care in the health system (Thacker, 2014). One of the services being monitored by the department of Health and Human Services is the electronic health record system, which carries private and vital information of patient’s health record enabling all eligible participating health workers access to these records (Thacker, 2014). A breach of the protective health information of patients in a health organization creates chaos as these are against the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law (Thacker, 2014). Hence, measure will have to be put in place to determine what caused the breach and how to rectify it to ensure the breach never happens again (Thacker, 2014).