around the regions

Colorado

Employees in Colorado are well on their way to wellness. The region has had a wellness program since 2004, and for the last four years has had a cash incentive to encourage employees to participate in wellness activities. The results have been positive. From 2009 to 2012, employee obesity rates have dropped from 34 percent to 32 percent. In addition, the prevention index—a composite metric that reflects the percentage of employees who are tobacco free, up to date on preventive screenings for heart disease and cancer, and not obese—has risen, with women improving from a 46 percent rating to 52 percent, and men improving from 44 percent to 50 percent.

Georgia

The Georgia region used its social media channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, to showcase employees, physicians and executives who mobilized for the Atlanta 2-Day Walk for Breast Cancer in October. Photos of giant, costumed characters “Doc Broc” and “Nurse Blueberry” filled the region’s news feeds, along with pictures of KP’s walkers and supporters. By using hyperlinks and hashtags, KP’s teams could connect with others involved in the event to generate online buzz for the walk. “Doc Broc” also appears at the KP-sponsored farmers’ market at Piedmont Park and other events. When not tracking the cruciferous crusader, the social media pages keep a steady diet of healthy recipes, tips and links to blog posts by top executives to show KP and its partner unions’ joint commitment to total health.

Hawaii

Safety conversations are sweeping the islands, with every employee in the region striving for at least two conversations per month, thanks to an idea pioneered by the Ambulatory Surgery Recovery unit. Brightly colored “topic stimulator” cards encourage staff members to share tips in a safe, fun manner. “Sharp attack” cards keep safe needle-handling on point. “Whoa” cards steer employees toward safer patient transport and lifting. “I spy” cards safeguard confidentiality by prompting frank discussions about hallway conversations, snooping, unattended computers and the paper shredder. Christy Borton, RN, the regional workplace safety champion—and injury rates, which were already low, are staying that way “We never talked about safety. Now we do, all the time, in the most meaningful ways.”

Mid-Atlantic States

The region’s fourth annual Learning Conference will provide opportunities to enhance skills in education and learning. Two days of workshops will provide ways to help clinical health educators improve communication skills and leverage the latest patient education technology. Informed and educated patients can participate in treatment, improve outcomes, help identify errors before they occur and reduce length of stay. This free conference also is for anyone in the region who facilitates or supports learning, including those who will be involved in engaging staff in workforce wellness activities—technical and LMP trainers, consultants, managers and supervisors, and shop stewards. Sessions begin Friday, Nov. 1, in College Park, Md. To view the conference web page and register, go to learn.kp.org and search for KPMAS Annual Learning Conference.

Northern California

Marcus Barnes and Donna Norton have been named the region’s Total Health union champions. The Total Health positions help support implementation of the 2012 National Agreement. Barnes, an OPEIU Local 29 member, works in the regional Claims department. Norton, a member of SEIU UHW, is a licensed vocational nurse at the Vacaville Injection Clinic, serves as an executive board member of SEIU UHW for Vacaville and Fairfield, and is her facility’s union co-lead. The pair will work closely with local union leaders and managers to recruit and train local workforce wellness champions, help frontline employees understand the National Agreement’s Total Health Incentive Plan, and work to integrate workforce wellness and workplace safety at the front line.

Northwest

Staff in the Northwest are getting healthy and having fun at the same time. At the Beaverton Medical Office, staff members teamed up to lose weight and sweetened the deal with an informal competition. Those who met their personal goal then took part in a drawing for a prize. Overall, staff members at the medical office have lost 89 pounds. If you come by, don’t be surprised if you see staff doing Instant Recess®, push-ups in the back office or working in the community garden.

Southern California

Panorama City Medical Center has 52 busy “Thrive ambassadors,” who talk to their colleagues about Kaiser Permanente’s wellness programs. They also recently started one community walk per month, raising awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s disease, victims of violent crime and other causes. Holly Craft Moreno, who is quoted in the cover story of this issue of Hank, says the group is always recruiting new ambassadors—adding that it’s not necessary to be a “rock star who does a triathlon every day.” The willing are welcome, she says: “Some of us can’t walk as fast as others. There is always someone on our team who will slow down, too.”

Colorado

The Metabolic Surgical Weight Management unit-based team at the Franklin Medical Office is saving money and improving efficiency by reducing unnecessary lab tests for patients. The team researched current literature and discovered that its process was not adding value to patient care. As a result, the team went from 40 to 50 tests each day to 10 to 12 a day, saving more than $700,000 in one year. The project helped propel the team from a Level 1 to a Level 5 on the Path to Performance. The team won the UBT Value Compass Award for the first quarter of 2015.

Georgia

When the Georgia region sought to promote compliance initiatives while engaging frontline workers, it copied an idea from an existing regional program. “We already have workplace safety champions, so we mirrored what they did to birth this little baby,” says Kim King, fraud control, privacy and security officer. As of December 2014, each of Georgia’s 30 medical centers and its medical records facility boast a compliance champion on site. The goal is to increase under-standing of possible compliance lapses, such as an unlocked door or allowing an unknown person into restricted areas. “Frontline staff—and the majority are union representatives—raise awareness and do monthly walkthroughs of the facilities,” says King.

Hawaii

After she helped set up a network of safety champions at the Moanalua Medical Center and medical offices in the Hawaii region, registered nurse Christy Borton won the individual award for Creating a Safer Workplace at Kaiser Permanente’s Workplace Safety Summit in late February. Borton, the workplace safety co-lead and a member of HNA OPEIU Local 50, is mobilizing colleagues around the region’s renewed focus on safety conversations and safety walk-arounds. Frontline staff share safety tips via a weekly safety newsletter. She also is working with the Safe Patient Handling Committee to spread the use of HoverMatts, which help prevent injuries to both patients and employees.

Mid-Atlantic States

Workplace safety leaders in the Mid-Atlantic States region are committed to investigating incidents in partnership. Ensuring that a labor representative can meet soon after an employee injury was a key to the boost seen over the last several months. In January, 89 percent of incident investigations were performed in partnership, a 10 percent increase over December and significantly better than in October, when fewer than 70 percent were investigated in partnership. Another improvement is that incidents were reported in an average of four days in January compared to an average of eight days in December. “If we don’t keep ourselves and each other safe, we won’t be there for our patients to provide the care they deserve,” says Samantha D. Unkelbach, RN, the labor lead for Workplace Safety/Integrated Disability Management for the Baltimore area and a member of UFCW Local 27.

Northern California

Before moving to a new facility in San Leandro, members of the Pulmonary Sleep Services Center in Hayward took action to raise their patient satisfaction scores from the bottom third to upper third. They asked patients what needed to improve and even visited some members at home. By listening, the unit-based team identified nearly 50 points of confusion patients face from the moment they arrive for treatment to when they go home. From February to August 2014, the UBT began letting patients return diagnostic equipment at their own convenience and staggered lunch breaks to ensure that patients could receive respiratory therapy around the clock. These changes helped transform the team from a Level 1 to a Level 4 on the Path to Performance.

Northwest

Building on the region’s success in exceeding the goal of 75 percent completion of the Total Health Assessment in 2014, Total Health leaders are taking more steps to create a culture of wellness. Cynthia Beaulieu, the region’s Total Health labor lead and an OFNHP member, along with her management partner Lauren Whyte, employee wellness consultant, work with unit-based teams to celebrate team approaches to health. They round on teams with leaders to acknowledge and learn from team efforts. One fun project was collecting “healthy selfies” to showcase on the region’s internet site. Beaulieu and Whyte are encouraging the more than 300 employees who submitted photos to share them on social media using the hashtag #KPHealthie.

Southern California

The region is adding a new dimension to its popular and effective reward and recognition program for inpatient Medical/Surgical and Maternal Child Health unit-based teams: a special award for teams that sustain their strong service scores for an entire year. For the performance year that recently ended, winners were Anaheim Medical Center for Maternal Child Health and Woodland Hills 4 West for Med-Surg. After celebrating their achievements, the teams are expected to help spread their successful practices to their peers at their own facilities and region-wide. Strategies they are considering are a one-day conference with presentations by the winning teams, hosting visits from other UBT co-leads, and monthly webinars.

For the first five years after the Permanente Foundation Health Plan opened to the public, there were no separate regions. Three hospitals—two in Northern California and one at the Fontana steel mill in Southern California—served the new members.

Northern California

The Oakland hospital opened on Aug. 21, 1942, and the Richmond hospital opened nine days later. Once the plan went public, the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union and other unions were prominent among the early member groups. Oakland city employees, union typographers, street car drivers and carpenters also embraced the plan. In 1953, state-of-the-art hospitals opened in San Francisco and Walnut Creek, as well as Los Angeles. Today, three union locals in Northern California belong to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: SEIU-UHW (28,800 members), OPEIU Local 29 (2,400 members) and IFPTE Local 20 (1,300 members).

Southern California

Harry Bridges, the ILWU president, wanted a hospital in the San Pedro area in 1949, and it was his promise of a large and stable membership that convinced health plan leaders to expand. He proved as good as his word, and KP became the sole supplier of medical care to ILWU’s 6,000 West Coast members. The Southern California Permanente Group was established in 1950. In 1951, the 15,000 members of the Retail Clerks Union Local 770 in Los Angeles, at the time the largest local in the country, joined the plan. Today, there are 13 coalition locals in Southern California: SEIU-UHW (18,000 members); UNAC/UHCP (16,000); United Steelworkers Local 7600 (6,000); OPEIU Local 30 (4,000); UFCW locals 770 (a descendant of the clerks union), 324, 135, 1428, 1442 and 1167 (3,860 total); Teamsters Local 166 (500); KPNAA (350); and SEIU Local 121RN (200).

Northwest

Health plan enrollment opened to the community in 1947 with the opening of an outpatient facility across the Columbia River from the closed Kaiser shipyards. It became a region in 1951 and has been at the forefront of several innovative practices. In 1964, it launched the Center for Health Research to advance evidence-based medicine. In 1974, it became the only KP region to provide prepaid dental services. In 1991, the Northwest started Kaiser-on-the-Job, a workers’ compensation program that has since spread to all regions. Coalition locals in the Northwest are: OFNHP/ONA (3,400), SEIU Local 49 (3,900), UFCW Local 555 (900) and ILWU Local 28 (65).

Hawaii

Hawaii opened in 1958—before the territory became a state—with strong support from the building and construction trades, which benefited strongly from Henry Kaiser’s hotel and housing projects. It was the last region to join the partnership, in 2009. The Hawaii Nurses Association, OPEIU Local 50 (800 members), belongs to the coalition.

Ohio

The Ohio region was the first organizational expansion of the health plan outside the western United States. The Community Health Foundation in Cleveland—which had been established by the Meatcutters and Retail Store Employees Union and had a structure similar to KP’s—merged with Kaiser Permanente in 1969 to form the Kaiser Community Health Foundation. The region left KP in 2013.

Colorado

Colorado also joined Kaiser Permanente in 1969, after requests from a group of labor, medical, university and government leaders. The United Mine Workers had regional headquarters in Denver, and Kaiser Permanente had longstanding relations with UMW through the Kabat Kaiser Institute in Vallejo, later known as the Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center, where injured miners were treated. Today, SEIU Local 105 (3,500 members), UFCW Local 7 (1,800) and IUOE Local 1 (23) belong to the union coalition.

Mid-Atlantic States

In 1980, KP acquired the failing Georgetown Community Health Plan and, through the use of existing community hospitals, began to operate profitably within two years. Kaiser Permanente believed locating in the Washington, D.C., area would provide high visibility regarding health care legislation. The effort was successful: In 1992, Jim Doherty, president of the Group Health Association of America, the professional organization for HMOs, remarked that the move “did more for the HMO movement than any single act since the HMO Act of 1973.” In 1984, the region opened its first pharmacy and changed its name to Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States. In 1996, it acquired Humana Group Health Inc., one of the country’s oldest HMOs. OPEIU Local 2 (3,800 members) and UFCW locals 400 and 27 (1,600 total) belong to the coalition.

Georgia

The Georgia region opened in 1985. Its first medical director was Harper Gaston, MD,
a Northern California physician and Georgia native who was proud to return home and serve the initial 265 members. In 1988, the region experienced dramatic growth when the state of Georgia came aboard as a major account and Kaiser Permanente acquired the financially ailing Maxicare Georgia HMO; within a year, the region celebrated its 100,000th member milestone. UFCW Local 1996 (1,800 members) is part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

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