Kaiser Model Shows the Way to Improving Health Care Delivery
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Using a combination of integrated, team-based care and technology, Kaiser Permanente of Southern California developed a Healthy Bones initiative that not only reduced fractures in the most at-risk patients by 37 percent, but lowered the care cost for the same patients by 30 percent.
Similar Kaiser programs have reduced heart disease deaths and treatment costs in Colorado and diabetes complications and costs in Hawaii.
Yesterday, a forum hosted by the National Labor College (NLC) and the Kaiser Permanente Health Care Institute explored how health care delivery and quality can be vastly improved and costs significantly lowered with integrated care and technology and by maximizing the unique labor-management partnership at Kaiser Permanente, where some 96,000 health care workers are unionized.
With the nation in the midst of a debate over how to reform the nation’s broken health care system and how to expand and improve care and reduce costs, the Kaiser model provides a promising blueprint.
