Press Releases: Northwest

December 15, 2004

Thanks to Kaiser Permanente, Member Walks Again

Rick Finley says, "I used to hate Kaiser. I had an HMO in another state, and I thought HMOs sucked. It left a bad taste in my mouth." Now, thanks to his primary care doctor, his surgeon, and a dedicated team of physical therapists, Rick's opinion of Kaiser Permanente has turned around.

Rick was born with an uncommon form of hereditary muscular dystrophy. "My mother had it, although we didn't know. We used to joke about how the kids could outrun her." He says, "When I was in 7th grade I was one of the fastest kids in school. Year after year I got slower, I was still water skiing and snow skiing until I was 35, but now I can't. I started using a cane eight years eight years ago." He just turned 56. Realizing that his mobility would grow more and more limited, Rick says he was "smart enough to go into a technical field." He now designs computer systems.

Rick and his wife had dual coverage between Kaiser Permanente and another local insurer. "Two and a half years ago, I came for my first appointment at Kaiser. I ended up waiting what I thought was way too long, and got a doctor who was about twenty years old. It wasn't a good match. I decided, 'I'm not going back there again. But my wife found a different primary care physician for me – Dr. Maharg. He was born and raised in Southern California. He has common sense, and he drives a little Mini-Cooper. With him, it's not so much a doctor to patient relationship, it's person-to-person."

As Rick got older and his disease progressed, his muscles worked less and less. He says, "If you want to stand up you just stand up. If I wanted to stand up, first I would have to be very careful which chair I sat in in the first place. Then I would have to find another chair and hold onto it. Then I would rock forward and back until I got up enough momentum that I could stand."

Walking was just as difficult. Many of his muscles no longer tightened, so Rick relied on locking his knees, the few muscles that did work, and sheer determination. Two years ago, Rick was walking on uneven ground and his knee unlocked. The resulting fracture of his right ankle left him wearing a short cast and driving an electric cart. One day as he was backing into his work station, Rick got what he calls the "go fast" button on his cart jammed under a piece of furniture. When he thought he was going to go backward, the cart "took off at ninety miles an hour" and threw him off, leaving him with spiral fracture of the left femur, which required a rod and screws. Now with a rod in one leg and a cast on the other, there was no way he could walk – and his muscles continued to deteriorate as his bones slowly healed.

After the leg surgery at a non-Kaiser Permanente hospital, Rick felt worse than he ever had before. He could sit for only an hour at a time, but his non-Kaiser Permanente doctor thought the problems stemmed from his muscular dystrophy. After a second opinion from Kaiser Permanente, Rick had a second surgery in October, performed by Kaiser Permanente's Robert Smith, MD, and then began physical therapy.

He says, "People at Kaiser Permanente – Dr. Maharg, Dr. Smith, and the physical therapy staff – have been beyond wonderful. They have gone out of their way to make it easy, to make it so I understand what's happening, and what is going to happen." Now three times a week he goes for physical therapy.

"For two years I haven't walked. Now they have me walking 100 feet at a time."

Rick says, "This is not the Kaiser I had known and grown to hate. The way things are working now, you guys are going to put a lot of other people out of business."