Electronic Health Records/Clinical Excellence

August 20 2008

Kaiser Permanente Featured in Best-Selling Book on Quality in Health Care

Kaiser Permanente features prominently in a new best-selling book about the burgeoning quality movement in American medicine.

"The Best Practice," by former Boston Globe journalist Charles Kenney, documents the history of the health care quality movement and today's efforts to transform health care. He explores how "quality improvement" evolved from a seldom-considered factor in health care to a mainstream institution that's now driving the industry to bigger – and ultimately, better – things.

"One of the most interesting things I discovered in the course of researching the book," Kenney said in a question-and-answer session for the book's publication, "is that there are quality pioneers in every major country and they are working together, sharing ideas and information. The new quality movement I write about is by no means confined to the United States – it's a worldwide movement."

Perhaps that's why Kenney devotes an entire chapter to Kaiser Permanente. The chapter focuses how Kaiser Permanente's senior leaders drove the successful implementation of Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect™ – the world's largest civilian electronic health record. In the chapter, Kenney notes that "Kaiser (Permanente) is a special place." In reference to the organization's technological advances in the health care industry, he states that "The key element of success was that Kaiser (Permanente) built a clinician-driven system. They had adopted a system that doctors had checked out and liked."

Today, more than 2 million Kaiser Permanente members have signed up to use My Health Manager, the organization's personal health record. In addition, Kaiser Permanente announced in May that all 8.7 million members were covered by an outpatient electronic health record, and that each of Kaiser Permanente's 14,000 physicians had access to their patients' medical records in the organization's 421 medical offices and clinics.

Kenney cites Kaiser Permanente among several organizations that have driven strong results through quality improvements. Among them:

• Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa., reduced its rate of central line infections from 49 per year to zero in just four years.
• Cincinnati Children's Hospital reduced its rate of hospital-acquired infections in surgeries from 2 percent to .4 percent.

Several people and organizations featured in the book, including Louise Liang, MD, Kaiser Permanente's senior vice president for quality and clinical systems support, will join a symposium next month in Boston at which Kenney's book will be the centerpiece of discussions. Among the people highlighted in the book that will attend the symposium are Don Berwick (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Sorrel King (Safe Care Campaign/Josie King Foundation), Uma Kotagal (Cincinnati Children's Hospital), and Goran Henriks (Jonkoping County, Sweden).

Kenney's book recently reached No. 27 on the best-seller list at amazon.com.