Kaiser Permanente earns top clinic-quality award

For the sixth year in a row, Kaiser Permanente is the only health plan in California to earn a four-star rating, the highest possible, for overall quality of care in the annual Healthcare Quality Report Card from California’s Office of the Patient Advocate (OPA).

Kaiser Permanente operates a clinic in Pleasanton and has other clinics and medical centers in Northern and Southern California.

The medical group also received four stars in the “Patients Rate their HMO” category, which measures members’ satisfaction with their care and service.

The 2014 report card (http://www.opa.ca.gov/report_card/) provides California consumers with side-by-side comparisons of the largest health plans in the state. It ranks the health plans on national standard-of-care measures that involve treatment and prevention of a range of conditions that have significant implications for personal health.

Of the 10 HMOs and six PPOs compared in the report card, Kaiser Permanente alone had the top rating for overall clinical-care measures.

“Kaiser Permanente Northern California is transforming health care with its integrated care model, a system in which each member’s team of care providers works in concert to ensure the best possible care and outcomes,” said Gregory A. Adams, group and regional president of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals/Health Plan Inc., in Northern California.

“We also understand that good health extends beyond the doctor’s office and the hospital,” he added. “For more than 60 years, we have been committed to helping people lead healthy lives and improving the health of the communities we serve.”

This year, Kaiser Permanente in Northern California earned four stars in eight of the nine report-card categories for clinical care, including asthma and lung care, cancer screening, diabetes care, heart care, maternity care and “getting the right care” for both adults and children.

“Today, Kaiser Permanente is the leader in quality and service and a model for health care in this country,” said Dr. Robert Pearl, executive director and CEO of the Permanente Medical Group.

“By attracting the best physicians and providing them with cutting edge technology, our patients receive the best and most convenient care possible,” he added. “As health-care reform shifts the emphasis from quantity of care to quality of care, Permanente medicine is the model that physician groups across the nation are increasingly trying to emulate.”

Since 2012, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the premier organization measuring the performance of health-care providers in the U.S., has been a partner with the OPA in developing the annual report card in California.

The 2014 OPA ratings follow several other recent honors received by Kaiser Permanente:

• Kaiser Permanente’s Medicare plans in California received a 5-star rating for 2014, the only health plan in the state to get the top rating, and one of only 11 plans in the nation to get a 5-star rating from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. More than 430 plans were rated, and 2013 was the third straight year Kaiser Permanente in California has received 5 stars.

• Kaiser Permanente Northern California was ranked the top commercial health plan in the state, and 7th in the Committee for Quality Assurance’s 2013 survey of health plans in the U.S. In the same survey, Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s Medicare plan was ranked 2nd-best in the nation of the more than 400 plans surveyed.

• Ten Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California were named Top Hospitals in 2013 by the Leapfrog Group. Only 90 hospitals in the nation, out of more than 1,300 surveyed, received this honor.

• Twenty Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California received “A” grades in the Leapfrog Group’s 2013 Safety Scores.

• Fourteen Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California were ranked as Top Performers in 2013 by The Joint Commission.

• Kaiser Permanente members rated the organization’s health plan highest in member satisfaction in California for the sixth consecutive year in the 2013 U.S. Member Health Plan study by J.D. Power and Associates.