Quality of Care
In the California Healthcare Quality Report Card 2011 Edition, Kaiser Permanente's Northern California and Southern California regions, Kaiser received 4 out of 4 possible stars in Meeting National Standards of Care. Kaiser North and South also received 3 out of 4 stars in Members Rate Their HMO.
U.S. News and World Report, in its 2006 annual ranking of US commercial health plans, ranked Kaiser Foundation Health Plans as follows, out of 246 rated plans:
- 45. Northern California
- 57. Colorado
- 65. Georgia
- 67. Ohio
- 90. Southern California
- 94. Hawaii
- 106. Mid-Atlantic States
- 121. Northwest
A 2004 Consumer Reports survey of planholders ranked Kaiser Permanente overall as average or better. It showed below average ratings in the Colorado and Mid-Atlantic regions for two measures of quality of care: 'care from doctors', and the 'quality of their primary care physician'. The same survey ranked Kaiser Permanente's Northern California region as the best HMO overall among rated plans.
KP's performance has been attributed to three practices: First, KP places a strong emphasis on preventive care, reducing costs later on. Second, its doctors are salaried rather than paid per service, which removes the main incentive for doctors to perform unnecessary procedures. Thirdly, KP attempts to minimize the time patients spend in high-cost hospitals by carefully planning their stay and by shifting care to outpatient clinics. This practice results in lower costs per member, cost savings for KP and greater doctor attention to patients. A comparison to the UK's National Health Service found that patients spend 2-5 times as much time in NHS hospitals as compared to KP hospitals.
Their habits of offering preventive care and managing chronic disease led a journalist writing for The New York Times to propose the Kaiser system in 2004 as a model for U.S. healthcare.
Read more about this topic: Kaiser Permanente
Famous quotes containing the words quality of, quality and/or care:
“So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn’t seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“As the quality of water changes with the nature of the soil;
So will a man’s reason vary with the quality of his friends.”
—Tiruvalluvar (c. 5th century A.D.)
“Self-determination has to mean that the leader is your individual gut, and heart, and mind or we’re talking about power, again, and its rather well-known impurities. Who is really going to care whether you live or die and who is going to know the most intimate motivation for your laughter and your tears is the only person to be trusted to speak for you and to decide what you will or will not do.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)