Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many people are employed by Kaiser Permanente?
As of October 2017, Kaiser Permanente had 11.7 million health plan members, 208,975 employees, 21,275 physicians, 54,072 nurses, 39 medical centers, and 720 medical facilities.[2] As of December 31, 2017, the non-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals entities reported a combined $3.8 billion in net income on $72.7 billion in operating revenues.[1] Each Permanente Medical Group operates as a separate for-profit partnership or professional corporation in its individual territory, and while none publicly reports its financial results, each is primarily funded by reimbursements from its respective regional Kaiser Foundation Health Plan entity. KFHP is one of the largest not-for-profit organizations in the United States.
Kaiser's Richmond Field Hospital served as the mid-level component of a three-tier medical care system that included six well-equipped First Aid Stations at the shipyards, and the main Permanente Hospital in Oakland, where the most critical cases were treated. By August 1944, 92.2 percent of all Richmond shipyard employees had joined Kaiser Permanente, the first voluntary group plan in the country to feature group medical practice, prepayment, and substantial medical facilities on such a large scale. After the war ended, the Health Plan was expanded to include workers' families. To serve employees at his diverse businesses, Kaiser opened Permanente facilities in Walnut Creek, California, in Hawaii, in Southern California, and eventually in many other locations. Since then, locations have opened in Dublin, California, Livermore, California, Pleasanton, California, Martinez, California, Santa Clara, California, and Antioch, California.
Permanente Metals Corporation (PMC) is best known for having managed the Richmond Shipyards in Richmond, California, owned by one of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's many corporations, and also engaged in related corporate activities. These four of the seven west coast Kaiser Shipyards were known for their construction of Liberty ships.
Halvorson is a long-time American healthcare executive who served as Kaiser Permanente CEO and chairman from 2002–2014 before retiring as CEO in 2013 and chair in January 2014. The Kaiser Permanente board of directors elected Bernard Tyson to the CEO role upon Halvorson's retirement. Halvorson was CEO of HealthPartners in Minnesota for 17 years before going to Kaiser Permanente.
Permanente Creek, named "Río Permanente" by early Spanish explorers because of its perennial flow, descends the east flank of Black Mountain then courses north to the Bay at the Mountain View Slough. Permanente Creek is also the namesake for Kaiser Permanente. Bess Kaiser and her spouse, industrialist Henry Kaiser, had a lodge on the creek's headwaters above the large Permanente Quarry and Cement Plant, and, in 1945, Bess felt that the name of their attractive and dependable stream would be a good name for their medical program at the shipyards. That medical program became Kaiser Permanente.
In addition to the regional entities, in 1996, the then-twelve Permanente Medical Groups created The Permanente Federation, a separate entity, which focuses on standardizing patient care and performance under one name and system of policies. Around the same time, The Permanente Company was also chartered as a vehicle to provide investment opportunities for the for-profit Permanente Medical Groups.[9] One of the ventures of the Permanente Company is Kaiser Permanente Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in emerging medical technologies.[10]
In addition, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals operates medical centers in California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, and outpatient facilities in the remaining Kaiser Permanente regions. The hospital foundations are not-for-profit and rely on the Kaiser Foundation Health Plans for funding. They also provide infrastructure and facilities that benefit the for-profit medical groups.
During the 1960s, Morris Collen, a physician working for Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research, developed computerized systems to automate many aspects of multi-phased health checkups. These systems became the basis the larger medical databases Kaiser Permanente developed during the 1970s and 1980s. The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) has since 1993 annually bestowed the Morris F. Collen, MD Medal for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Medical Informatics.
Kaiser permanente
Elsewhere, Kaiser Permanente did not do as well, and its geographic footprint changed significantly in the 1990s. The organization spun off or closed outposts in Texas, North Carolina, and the Northeast. In 1998, Kaiser Permanente sold its Texas operations, where reported problems had become so severe that the organization directed its lawyers to attempt to block the release of a Texas Department of Insurance report. This prompted the state attorney general to threaten to revoke the organization's license.[40] Kaiser Permanente closed health plans in Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham[41] in North Carolina four years later. The organization also sold its unprofitable Northeast division in 2000. The Ohio division was sold to Catholic Health Partners in 2013.[42]
The Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital for the Kaiser Shipyards, financed by the United States Maritime Commission, opened on August 10, 1942. It was sponsored by Henry J. Kaiser's Permanente Foundation and Garfield was the Medical Director. The field hospital served as the mid-level component of a three-tier medical care system that also included six well-equipped first aid stations at the individual shipyards, and the main Kaiser Permanente hospital in Oakland, California, where the most critical cases were treated. Together, these facilities served the employees of the Kaiser shipyards who had signed up for the Permanente Health Plan (commonly referred to as the "Kaiser Plan"), one of the country's first voluntary pre-paid medical plans, and a direct precursor to the Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) defined by the federal Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973.
During this period, a substantial amount of growth came from union members; the unions saw Kaiser Permanente care as more affordable and comprehensive than what was available at the time from private physicians under the fee-for-service system. For example, Fortune magazine had reported in 1944 that 90% of the U.S. population could not afford fee-for-service healthcare. Kaiser Permanente membership soared to 154,000 in 1950, 283,000 in 1952, 470,000 in 1954, 556,000 in 1956, and 618,000 in 1958.[27]
Marlen was selected as the 57th Assembly District Woman of the Year in 2005 and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Independent Cities Association. Marlen is a manager at the Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center and has achieved 25 years of service to the organization. She was selected by Kaiser Permanente to be the recipient of the 1999 and 2001 YWCA Woman of Achievement for her contributions to Kaiser Permanente.
While it was in operation, the Kaiser program had a 100% survival rate, which is better than other transplant centers. However, patients who needed a kidney were less likely to be offered one.[58] Northern California Kaiser performed 56 transplants in 2005, and twice that many patients died while waiting for a kidney. At other California transplant centers, more than twice as many people received kidneys than died during the same period. Unlike other centers, the Kaiser program did not perform riskier transplants or use donated organs from elderly or other higher-risk people, which have worse outcomes. Northern California Kaiser closed the kidney transplant program in May 2006. As before, Northern California Kaiser now pays for pre-transplant care and transplants at other hospitals. This change affected approximately 2,000 patients.[59][60]
Permanente Creek is also the namesake for Kaiser Permanente. Bess Kaiser and her spouse, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, had a lodge on the creek's headwaters above the large Permanente Quarry and Cement Plant, and, in 1945, Bess felt that the name of their attractive and dependable stream would be a good name for their medical program at the shipyards. That medical program became Kaiser Permanente.
In 1948, Kaiser established the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, (also known as Kaiser Family Foundation), a U.S.-based, non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the nation.[24] The Foundation, not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries, is an independent voice and source of facts and analysis for policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the general public.[24]
The quarry was founded by Henry J. Kaiser as the Kaiser Permanente Cement Plant in 1939, taking the name of the business from the Permanente Creek in whose valley it lies. Kaiser intended to use the quarry to provide the majority of the cement used in the construction of the Shasta Dam, supplying the of cement . Additionally, Kaiser Cement Company built Highway 101, Highway 85 and other major Northern California landmarks from the quarry. The cement plant is the primary reason for the lone railroad line that runs through the city. Hanson Cement acquired Kaiser Cement for $200 million in 1986. The cement company was renamed Hanson Permanente Cement in 1999. At the time of sale, Kaiser Cement was the 5th largest producer of cement in the entire United States.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plans (KFHP) work with employers, employees, and individual members to offer prepaid health plans and insurance. The health plans are not-for-profit and provide infrastructure for and invest in Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and provide a tax-exempt shelter for the for-profit medical groups. Permanente Medical Groups are physician-owned organizations, which provide and arrange for medical care for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan members in each respective region. The medical groups are for-profit partnerships or professional corporations and receive nearly all of their funding from Kaiser Foundation Health Plans. The first medical group, The Permanente Medical Group (TPMG), formed in 1948 in Northern California. Permanente physicians become stockholders in TPMG after three years at the company.[7]
, which represents the Permanente Medical Groups A project by OSHPD Report on successful Kaiser Permanente initiatives including declaration by Louise Liang falsely attributing Vioxx discovery to KP HealthConnect even though it was not yet in production use in Northern California Home page of a group scrutinizing managed care and its failures, contains links to several pages about issues involving Kaiser Permanente
In 1951, the organization acquired its current name when Henry Kaiser unilaterally directed the trustees of the health plans, hospital foundations, and medical groups to add his name before Permanente.[29] However, the physicians in the Permanente Medical Group deeply resented the implication that they were directly controlled by Kaiser, and successfully forced him to back off with respect to their part of the organization. That same year, Kaiser Permanente also began experiments with large-scale multiphasic screening to identify unknown conditions and to facilitate treatment of known ones.[30] Simultaneously, although no one questioned his medical competence, Garfield's deficiencies as an executive were becoming apparent as the organization expanded far beyond his ability to manage it properly.[31]
Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center is a general medical and surgical hospital in Warner Center. Kaiser Permanente Medical Center consists of a 175-bed hospital and serves 2 million residents of the San Fernando Valley. Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Hospital, a non-profit general medical and surgical facility, is operated by Kaiser Foundation Hospital.
The term was the centerpoint on August 20, 2007 at The Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy's roundtable on “Improving Health Care ‘Systemness’: A Look at the Evidence and Policy Implications." The conference applied the term to describe how the Kaiser Permanente consortium can consolidate medical resources to achieve higher-quality output for all parties involved.
Having overseen Kaiser Permanente's successful transformation from Henry Kaiser's healthcare experiment into a large-scale self-sustaining enterprise, Keene retired in 1975.[37] By 1976, membership reached three million. In 1977, all six of Kaiser Permanente's regions had become federally qualified health maintenance organizations. Historians [who?] now believe then-President Richard Nixon specifically had Kaiser Permanente in mind when he signed the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, as the organization was mentioned in an Oval Office discussion of the Act, where John Ehrlichman characterized Kaiser's philosophy thus: "All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make."[38] In 1980, Kaiser acquired a non-profit group practice to create its Mid-Atlantic region, encompassing the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. In 1985, Kaiser Permanente expanded to Georgia.
State insurance regulations require that insurers maintain certain minimum amounts of cash reserves to ensure that they are able to meet their obligations; the amount varies by insurer, based on its risk factors, such as its investments, how many people it insures, and other factors; a few states also have caps on how large the reserves can be.[75]
Various legal entities serve the areas of the US where Kaiser operates: California (the largest two), Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, mid-Atlantic, Pacific Northwest, and Washington. Northern California, 3,351,449 members[8] Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (KFHP) Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (KFH) The Permanente Medical Group, Inc. (TPMG) Southern California, 3,499,035 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (KFHP) Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (KFH) Southern California Permanente Medical Group (SCPMG) Colorado, 531,908 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado (KFHPCO) Colorado Permanente Medical Group, P.C. (CPMG) Georgia, 222,074 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Georgia, Inc. (KFHPGA) The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, Inc. (TSPMG) Hawaii, 226,900 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (KFHP) Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (KFH) Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, Inc. (HPMG) Mid-Atlantic (vicinity of Washington, D.C., including Maryland and Virginia), 581,000 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States Inc. (KFHPMA) Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group, P.C. (MAPMG) Northwest (Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington), 480,386 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Northwest (KFHPNW) Kaiser Foundation Hospitals (KFH) Northwest Permanente, P.C. Physicians and Surgeons (NWP) Washington (except Southwest Washington), 681,386 members Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington Washington Permanente Medical Group
In the fall of 2018, Kaiser Permanente and the reached a Tentative Agreement on a national, 3-year collective bargaining agreement that covers nearly 48,000 unionized Kaiser Permanente health care workers in 22 union locals. The negotiations, which began in May, were among the largest private-sector contract talks in the United States this year. The deputy director and commissioners of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service attended the sessions. This agreement went far beyond the traditional contract issues of wages and benefits to include provisions to strengthen the groundbreaking between Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance, at the senior leadership level as well as the front-line level. This includes 3,600 unit-based teams — jointly led by pairs of managers and union-represented employees — that are delivering significant improvements in the areas of quality, affordability, service and work environment on behalf of Kaiser Permanente members and patients.