Kaiser Permanente

Founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield, Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care consortium, made up of three distinct but interdependent groups of entities:

• The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (KFHP) and its regional operating subsidiaries;
• Kaiser Foundation Hospitals; and
• the regional Permanente Medical Groups.

As of 2014, Kaiser Permanente operates in eight states and the District of Columbia, and is the largest managed care organization in the United States. Each Permanente Medical Group operates as a separate for-profit partnership or professional corporation in its individual territory, and while none publicly reports its financial results, each is primarily funded by reimbursements from its respective regional Kaiser Foundation Health Plan entity. KFHP is one of the largest not-for-profit organizations in the United States. KP's quality of care has been highly rated and attributed to a strong emphasis on preventive care, its doctors being salaried rather than paid per service, and an attempt to minimize the time patients spend in high-cost hospitals by carefully planning their stay. Kaiser Foundation Health Plans (KFHP) work with employers, employees, and individual members to offer prepaid health plans and insurance. The health plans are not-for-profit and provide infrastructure for and invest in Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and provide a tax-exempt shelter for the for-profit medical groups. Permanente Medical Groups are physician-owned organizations, which provide and arrange for medical care for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan members in each respective region. The medical groups are for-profit partnerships or professional corporations and receive nearly all of their funding from Kaiser Foundation Health Plans. Kaiser also operates a Division of Research, which annually conducts between 200 and 300 studies, and the Center for Health Research which in 2009 had more than 300 active studies. Kaiser's bias toward prevention is reflected in the areas of interest-vaccine and genetic studies are prominent. The work is funded primarily by federal, state, and other outside (non-Kaiser) institutions.