It’s not just the satisfaction of delivering a healthy baby, or helping a senior build strength and balance. It’s knowing that we’re part of a committed team of thousands of professionals who work in partnership to make a positive impact on millions of lives. Our caregivers coordinate across conditions, services, and settings, and over time for each patient. This lets us go beyond responding to illness so we can focus on preventive care. Kaiser Permanente’s philosophy, structure, and incentives make it possible for our physicians, nurses, and staff to work collaboratively to provide comprehensive care, achieve superior clinical outcomes, and help our members maximize their total health.
Respecting the customs and practices of different cultures is important in society as a whole. In health care, it becomes even more important. Differences in language, cultural beliefs, attitudes, and behavior must be considered for each individual in order to support their total health—mind, body, and spirit.
At Kaiser Permanente, we are committed to deliver health services in a manner that is personalized and acknowledges and understands cultural diversity in the clinical setting. In 1999, we took a large step in this direction by establishing the Institute for Culturally Competent Care. By 2010, we had nine centers for Culturally Competent Care across our regions to enhance our caregivers’ ability to respectfully integrate issues of culture, race, and ethnicity during a member’s visit. By incorporating these issues into our practice of personalized care, we are able to achieve positive health outcomes and greatly reduce racial and ethnic health disparities for our members.
In 2005, we created a national agreement with the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions that identified unit-based teams as critical to continuous performance improvement. In 2010, more than 3,400 of these teams were living up to their role—serving as the engine that drives our frontline performance, service quality, and efficiency.
Members of a unit-based team touch nearly everything we do. They help analyze day-to-day operations and create optimal work environments. They find new ways to improve performance, rethink work flows, and launch initiatives on workplace safety. Because teams increase consistency and standardization of treatment, they improve the way we care for our members.
Are they effective? Absolutely. Because of unit-based teams, Kaiser Permanente members and patients remain the focusand we are continuously improving our member care and service experience. To learn more about the important work of our unit-based teams visit LMPartnership.org.
We believe that our integrated health care system makes us fundamentally different, and our 15,853 physicians do, too. Our philosophy, structure, and incentives are aligned to enable a collaborative culture of healing that is well-recognized throughout the medical profession. Our unique organization attracts a steady flow of the best physician candidates who want to be free of distractions and put their patients at the center of every decision they make. They want to focus on their calling to be healers and empower their patients to maximize their total health including mind, body, and spirit. And at Kaiser Permanente, they do just that.
Our physicians have built a culture of healing and life-long learning that fosters collaboration, teamwork, and professional development because they want to belong to something far greater than a practice. They want to be active members of a community that encourages them to provide the best care their patients need to get and stay healthy. They want to work together toward proactive engagement and preventive care to ensure that Kaiser Permanente is a model for the future of health care today and tomorrow.
