Kaiser Medicine: What's Wrong With It?

Posted by: Neil Hillyard
June 29, 2007
Topic: Kaiser

Over the years of representing victims of medical malpractice, I have seen an inordinate number of instances of patients being injured or killed by the conduct of Kaiser healthcare providers.  In some instances the malpractice involved negligence of individual physicians and seemingly had nothing to do with the Kaiser system.  However, in many instances, the injury or death of the patient can be traced back to the Kaiser system itself.

The Kaiser system, like other managed care sytems today, is based upon a business model that emphasizes profit at the sacrifice of quality medical care for it's subscribers.  A Kaiser subscriber pays a monthly premium whether he or she gets medical care that month or not.  The more care that is provided by Kaiser the less Kaiser makes in profit!  The less care provided by Kaiser, the more profit realized by Kaiser!  It is that simple.

Kaiser utilizes a number of mechanisms to cut costs which decrease the quality of medical care provided.  The utilization of ancillary care givers, such as physician assistants or nurse practitioners, in place of physician care is a major problem.  While these individuals are undoubtedly well intended and well trained, they are not doctors!  Kaiser does this based upon the pretense that they are supervised by a physician.  This is not well founded.  Most of the time, the patient never sees a doctor.  The doctor is supposed to review what the nurse or physician assistant has done at the end of the day by looking at the chart.  This is a system which may save money but leads to poor care and bad results to patients.

Kaiser personnel is motivated to keep costs to a minimum.  Patients who would be admitted to a hospital are sent home.  Tests, which would be performed outside Kaiser, are not performed.  Kaiser will argue that, in these instances, admitting the patient to the hospital or running a test is merely defensive medicine driven by the threat of a lawsuit.  In my opinion, this reasoning is an attempt to justify the failure to give priority to the patient's well-being versus the financial well-being of Kaiser.  If the threat of a lawsuit is what forces a patient to be admitted to the hospital or a test to be run, thank God for lawsuits!  If there is any question as to whether or not a patient should be admitted to the hospital, admit the patient!  Err on the side of caution and the patient's well-being!  If a test might provide information which would help treat a patient, do the test!  If this reasoning leads to defensive medicine, I want defensive medicine practiced on me and my family!  You are not going to get it at Kaiser.  For more information regarding this please refer to our website, www.hwkslaw.com

Web Resources

FindLaw
Thomson West
U.S. Courts
Westlaw
United States Chamber of Commerce
FirstGov
Library of Congress
White House
Internal Revenue Service
Yahoo!Legal Blog Directory
Colorado Personal Injury Attorney