November 7, 2012 – With Oregon’s unemployment rate at 8.7 percent, many families continue to suffer from insecurity and financial hardship. These difficulties are even more striking for our veterans and their families returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
October 31, 2012 – Physicians working for Kaiser in Oregon and California are now treating exercise as a vital sign. That is, patients are asked how much exercise they get per week, for both routine checkups and acute care visits – regardless of the nature of the visit.
October 23, 2012 -- Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center is creating a bit of buzz in local literary circles.
October 17, 2012 -- Kaiser Permanente has created a new electronic Exercise Vital Sign initiative to systematically record patients’ physical activity in their electronic health records.
October 17, 2012 – A new research collaboration led by Kaiser Permanente has received a prestigious designation from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to serve of as one of the nation’s 11 Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs). The EPCs produce evidence reviews on behalf of programs such as AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program (EHC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
October 12, 2012 — The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced today that the Kaiser Permanente Medicare plan in the Northwest Region earned 5 stars, the highest overall rating for quality and service for 2013 plans. This is the second year the region has received the top rating from CMS.
October 11, 2012 -- Susan Chaney is convinced insurance companies are some of the highest profiting companies in America at the expense of people such as herself who deserve the right to affordable healthcare.
She spoke out after her husband, Jerry, a diabetic, was hospitalized at Kaiser Sunnyside in January for a foot ulcer that had gone undiagnosed.
After receiving the bill, Chaney realized their deductible and co-insurance hadn’t been met. That, she said, was never the issue.
October 9, 2012 -- Kaiser Permanente, a champion of healthy eating, announced Saturday it has signed a commitment with the Partnership for a Healthier America to improve food offerings in its 37 hospitals.
October 4, 2012 -- Kaiser Permanente has bolstered its newly won lead as the state’s top health insurer at the same time as long-time leader Regence BlueCross BlueShield has continued its slide.
And while No. 3 PacificSource still has half the members of Kaiser and Regence, it enrolled more new members than anyone else in the state, according to reports on the first half of 2012 filed with the Oregon Insurance Division.
September 21, 2012 — Two Kaiser Permanente Northwest health plans have been ranked number one in the Northwest for 2012 by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality.
It’s the second year in a row that Kaiser Permanente Northwest’s Medicare and private (commercial) plans received the top ranking among HMO and PPO plans. In addition, the Medicare plan ranked fifth best in the nation, while the private (commercial) plan was ranked 13th best nationally.
