Out of the factories of war, a gift of health: Kaiser Permanente marks 50 years of providing health care; Southern California celebration is May 2.PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 1995--Fifty years ago, the war in Europe was drawing to a close. The war industries were facing the prospects of gearing down production of ships, airplanes and other war materiel ma·te·ri·el or ma·té·ri·el n. The equipment, apparatus, and supplies of a military force or other organization. See Synonyms at equipment. . And in California and Oregon, a health plan was quietly being born. What later became known as the Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed care organization, based in Oakland, California, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R. Garfield. Medical Care Program opened its doors to the general public in early 1945. Created to serve the workers in Henry J. Kaiser's wartime factories in Fontana and Richmond, Calif., and in Portland, Ore., the prepaid health plan had proved quite popular with the wartime workers and with the physicians who served them. Seeing the end of the war draw near, the doctors voted to open the health plan to non-Kaiser industries workers, thereby launching a whole new way of providing health care. On Tuesday, at the organization's facilities throughout Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , employees and physicians will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kaiser Permanente. In Pasadena, personnel will be signing a banner for permanent display in the headquarters' lobby. Staff at other facilities will be celebrating with decorated birthday cupcakes and cookies, by wearing '40s clothing for the day, and by gifts of memorabilia such as T-shirts and coffee mugs. From its relatively modest beginnings with 3,000 members and one small 85-bed hospital, the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program has evolved into a Southern California institution now serving 2.1 million members in 10 owned-and-operated hospitals and more than 100 medical office buildings from Kern County in the north to the southern edge of San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. County. Nationwide, the Program now serves 6.7 million members in 16 states and the District of Columbia District of Columbia, federal district (2000 pop. 572,059, a 5.7% decrease in population since the 1990 census), 69 sq mi (179 sq km), on the east bank of the Potomac River, coextensive with the city of Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States). . Early in the war, Henry J. Kaiser Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882—August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. Early life Beginning as a cashier in a dry-goods shop in Utica, New York, Kaiser moved many times as he pursued the had contracted with Sidney Garfield, M.D., to provide health care on a prepaid basis to the steel mill workers and their families in the farm country of San Bernardino San Bernardino, city, United States San Bernardino (săn bûr'nədē`nō), city (1990 pop. 164,164), seat of San Bernardino co., S Calif., at the foot of the San Bernardino Mts.; inc. 1854. , 40 miles away from the coast and potential bombing. Garfield had successfully created similar health programs for the workers of the Colorado River Colorado River River, south-central Argentina. Its major headstreams, the Grande and Barrancas rivers, flow southward from the Andes Mountains and meet to form the Colorado near the Chilean border. It flows southeastward across northern Patagonia and the southern Pampas. Aqueduct in the desert east of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. in the '30s, and at the construction site of the Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam (k  `lē), 550 ft (168 m) high and 4,173 ft (1,272 m) long, on the Columbia River, N central Wash. in Washington state. Over the years, the concept of a prepaid, managed-care health plan as a method to provide quality health care to large numbers of people encountered misunderstanding, mistrust and eventually acceptance on the part of the general public and non-health maintenance organization physicians and medical institutions. The Kaiser Permanente organization has grown and evolved to reflect the needs of the communities it serves and the ever-changing health-care environment. Today, the nation's largest health maintenance organization, with its emphasis on preventive care and its proven ability to provide prepaid, comprehensive, quality health care, is referred to increasingly by government and social architects as a health-care delivery method that could serve as a model for the future. Among the many contributions Kaiser Permanente has made to today's medical practice: It was the template for today's concept of a health maintenance organization and the responsible blending of business and medicine, a leader in the once-radical and now-common practice of pre-payment for health-care services, and a leader in the practice of preventive medicine preventive medicine, branch of medicine dealing with the prevention of disease and the maintenance of good health practices. Until recently preventive medicine was largely the domain of the U.S. , or "health maintenance" (as opposed to traditional fee-for-service "sick care"). The health maintenance idea grew out of the practice of prepayment for services which put the care provider "at risk" for all care needed -- an early discovery was that it was less expensive to keep people healthy than to treat sick ones. On his 85th birthday, only a few months before his death in 1967, Henry J. Kaiser, assessing his life's achievements, said: "Of all things I've done, I expect only to be remembered for my hospitals. They're the things that are filling the people's greatest need -- good health." -0- NOTE: To request an in-depth release, chronology and historical photos of Kaiser Permanente, call 800/405-5534, or your local Kaiser Permanente public affairs office. CONTACT: Kaiser Permanente, Pasadena Pam Dean, 818/405-5534 Kathleen Barco, 818/405-5528 |
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