Northwest Permanente history

When they undertook the Grand Coulee project, the Kaisers persuaded Doctor Garfield to come in 1938 to eastern Washington State, where they were managing a consortium constructing the Grand Coulee Dam.

In the early 1940’s, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R. Garfield worked together to provide the first-of-its-kind prepaid health care in the nation to employees.

The Permanente Foundation Hospital in Oakland after 1942 rebuild. (attribution: Kaiser Permanente)

Therefore, on July 21, 1945, the Permanente Health Plan officially opened to the public.

Ernest Saward, MD, who had administered the wartime health care plan for DuPont plutonium workers at Hanford, Washington, became the medical director of the physician group and the Northwest health plan in 1947.

The first medical group, The Permanente Medical Group, formed in 1948 in Northern California.

With the class of 1949, he decided for the first time to alternate between the two schools and it was clearly Stanford's turn.

As noted earlier, starting in the spring of 1952, I'd been handling the duties of the corporate secretary's office--using probably about 5 percent of my working time.

The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to augment through tape-recorded memoirs the Library's materials on the history of California and the West.

In 1957 he joined the Health Plan in Los Angeles as employee relations advisor, shortly thereafter becoming Health Plan manager of the Southern California Region.

Despite many inauspicious aspects of the startup, the facility opened to serve members and patients in mid November 1958.

At the stage of development of dual choice plans in 1959 it was not at all evident that the selection problems were serious problems.

The schedules showed that each of the five partners received somewhat over $50,000 from the partnership for the calendar year 1961.

Membership reached one million in 1963.

Fleming, do you recall why Edgar Kaiser and Gene Trefethen would have been opposed in 1964 to expansion?

In the summer and fall of 1968, the Cleveland Community Health Foundation was in imminent danger of financial collapse, and the financial capacity of the labor groups that had been supporting the program was nearing the point of exhaustion.

He became quite active in the health policy debate that was going on at about the time that the Nixon administration took office in 1969.

Ernie Saward had left in 1970, and the successor to him as medical director, although a wonderful person, was not a strong leader.

*The preceding transcript is from the University of Virginia for the clearest possible presentation (pathway discovered by Vickie Travis). Check – February 17, 1971, 5:26 pm – 5:53 pm, Oval Office Conversation 450-23.

In 1974 Henry Meade Kaiser became CEO of KFI. Was that a titular position?

Nine years later, in 1976, membership reached three million.

In 1977 Fleming returned to the Central Office as Senior Vice President in its Executive Department.

In 1980, Kaiser acquired a non-profit group practice to create the Mid-Atlantic region, encompassing the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

The combination of taking an underwriting risk and being subject to retroactive changes through cost reimbursement methodology was not practical from the viewpoint of Kaiser Permanente and most other plans. It was not until the Medicare amendments of 1982, when the Medicare authorities were beginning to recognize the value of a price system as contrasted with a cost system, that the legislation was finally amended in a manner that permitted

The Kaiser Permanente Oral History Project staff, comprised of Malca Chall, Sally Hughes, and Ora Huth, met frequently throughout 1985 to assign the interviews, plan the procedures and the time frame for research, interviewing, and editing, and to set up a master index.

Similarly the project lost Karl Steil due to his lengthy illness and death in 1986.

Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., March 15, 1989.

Kaiser spokespersons were also placed on MacNeil-Lehrer, First Business, and CBS Evening News to promote the Kaiser brand of HMO. A report by the California Nurses Association found that in 1995 Kaiser paid out $96.1 million to its top four management consultant firms alone.

The problems in Texas were so severe that Kaiser directed its law firm to attempt to block the release of a Texas Department of Insurance report in 1997 – a report that prompted the state attorney general to threaten to revoke Kaiser’s license.

Kaiser sold its Texas HMO in 1998.

Kaiser closed its unprofitable Northeast division in 2000.

In 2004, Kaiser launched a $40 million dollar ad campaign titled “Thrive”. The television, radio, billboard, print, and web campaign focuses on the theme of preventive care.

In 2005, The United States and state attorneys general penalized Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc., Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and the Hawaii Permanente Medical Group $1.9 million for making improper Medicare and Medicaid claims.