Our Point of View
Mar 19 2008
Kaiser Permanente Among Health Care Leaders 'Confronting the Chronic Care Challenge'
Kaiser Permanente was among health care organizations and workers who, at a summit in Washington, D.C., highlighted a dozen innovative programs that improve the quality of chronic health care and also contain costs.
The Partnership for Quality Care's March 19 summit, "Confronting the Chronic Care Challenge," is the first in a yearlong series of events the partnership will hold to bring attention to quality as the United States discusses health care reform.
In conjunction with the summit, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan/Hospitals' CEO George Halvorson and Service Employees International Union Healthcare Chairman Dennis Rivera co-authored a piece in Modern Healthcare .
The Partnership for Quality Care includes more than a million nurses, residents and health care workers and providers treating more than 50 million patients a year. The coalition is dedicated to the reform and improvement of our health care system to ensure that affordable, high-quality healthcare is available to every American.
Among the dozen innovative chronic care programs highlighted at the summit were two from Kaiser Permanente:
- Kaiser Permanente's Northern California region has used a combination of preventive programs and evidence-based medicine, with the prescription of generic medications to patients with high blood pressure where appropriate, to take aim at heart disease. The result? Heart disease has dropped 30 percent among Kaiser Permanente's Northern California members.
- Kaiser Permanente and SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West demonstrated success in implementing an electronic health record that has led to a 57 percent reduction in hospital medication errors.
Pushing the health care quality to the fore of the health care reform debate is the partnership's goal, Halvorson and Rivera emphasized in their Modern Healthcare piece. "Healthcare reform is happening right now; the right models are being developed today in communities around the country," they wrote. "If we can bring quality to the center of the debate, we can bring innovation and excellence to healthcare delivery. There's no greater challenge than this, and no greater success story for our patients and communities."
For more about the Partnership for Quality Care and the "Confronting the Chronic Care Challenge," read this news release or visit the partnership's website.
* Republishing this PDF in the Kaiser Permanente News Center has been licensed through Modern Healthcare magazine. This PDF can only be printed or downloaded for personal use; any subsequent republication of it without the written permission of Modern Healthcare is prohibited.