HealthConnect is Kaiser Permanentes’ name for their electroni health record (EHR), but first allow me to give you a brief presentation of this American insurance, so admired among health managers specially the European ones.
Brief overview of Kaiser Permanente
In 1933 Dr. Sydney Garfield established a prepaid health plan model for workers on an aqueduct in California’s desert. Later, in 1938, Henry Kaiser persuaded Dr. Garfield to extend the experience to other groups of workers, both in California and Washington. Immediately after the war ended, in 1945, the Kaiser-Garfield health plans opened to the general public. These health plans were based, in the beginning, on a reciprocal prepaid model, a care group practice, a population view of prevention and shared clinical information. This pattern contrasted sharply with other policies, in a country that represented and continues to represent the epitome of payment per service.
Today, Kaiser is an insurance that functions through a stable agreement with a doctors’ company called Permanente. It has 9 million members in 9 states, 36 hospitals, 533 health centres, 170,000 employees plus 16,000 physicians in Permanente, a budget of $48,000 M and $2,000 M of benefits (2011).
