[kaiserthrive.org’s editor’s note: We love birthday parties — especially our own — but even so we were taught to be humble on these occasions, and that it would be less than polite to toot our own horn. Not so George Halvorson, who appears to revel in insulting Kaiser Permanente victims by refusing to address their complaints about Kaiser, while giving awards to himself and misrepresenting his non profit in name only organization as the preferred model for the future of American health care. George can be so convincing that even we might be tempted to believe the hype — that is until we remind ourselves that his own market research found that 75% of health care consumers who weren’t forced to wouldn’t touch Kaiser Permanente “health care” with a ten foot pole.
Speaking of parties… Lehna Jordann Brewer would be around 18 months old today, and there isn’t much her parents and sisters wouldn’t give for the privilege of writing an announcement to the world, celebrating the milestones she should have achieved by this age. Instead, parties for Lehna and her family look a lot like memorial services, thanks to Mr. Health Care Reform and Kaiser; and Halvorson’s lawyers don’t even think the loss of her life is worthy of an accurate representation of her medical records. In short, George C. Halvorson is a liar.
A couple of people sent us Halvorson’s self-congratulatory memo below, but we couldn’t resist posting it along with the following commentary from a long-time anonymous reader, who reminds us what George really means when he designates himself as an “industry leader”.]
It’s Halvorson’s fifth birthday! He decided to send a message to all Kaiser employees so they could share in his joy. Some of the “good news”…Halvorson says: ” I expect us to pass (the Mayo Clinic) in the total capabilities of (HealthConnect) by mid-2009″–which is PRBS? for: “HealthConnect’s roll-out has been delayed again”. And out of 40,000,000 patient encounters, Kaiser provided 250,000 “charity” encounters to poor people. So giving away 0.006% of your services is enough to make you non-profit! Some one should call Blue Cross…I bet they want to stop having to pay taxes, too…I bet the write-off rate for Wellpoint is considerably higher than 0.006%. If they can start “giving” those services away instead of writing them off, they can keep a good 25% of the profit they have to fork over to Uncle Sam as corporate income tax. Then they can “reinvest” it in “care delivery” (wink wink).
Last line’s the best: “Be well. And let me hear from you”.
September 18, 2007
To: All KP Employees and Physicians
From: George Halvorson, Chairman and CEO, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan
Re: Sharing Kaiser Permanente’s Good NewsPeople in various settings often ask me, “What exactly is Kaiser Permanente?”
That’s not an unreasonable question. As you know, we don’t fit into any obvious box or category. There aren’t many organizations in the world that look exactly like us. There are very few in the U.S. and only a few in the rest of the world.
The county-based health systems in Sweden do look quite a lot like us. The Swedish county-based care systems provide health care “insurance” coverage for their local people and then also care for them in the context of organized, patient-focused hospital/physician caregiver teams. Much like us, the Swedes also have vertically integrated, tightly linked care delivery and financing systems. But very few people in the U.S. know about the care teams in Sweden, so I usually can’t answer that question here — about who and what we are — by pointing to the Swedes.
So how do I answer? I tell people that we are at our core a community of caregivers. We are inherently a care system. We are people who deliver care. We are, in total, a fairly complex set of organizations that are mutually organized and aligned around improving total health and the delivery of care.
That basic fact of being caregivers gives us a certain consistent and collective set of values at our very heart. More than 160,000 people work at Kaiser Permanente. Roughly 140,000 of our people work in care delivery — in our hospitals, medical centers, pharmacies, laboratories, and related care sites. So we truly are basically caregivers. That explains a lot. That’s why we all start with a consistent set of values. Caregivers go into the caregiving professions to deliver care . . . to care for people.
Helping people is what we do — and we are an organization of people who deliberately choose to spend our lives and careers helping people. It is very much a matter of free will, free choice, and self-selection. No one is forced into nursing or cardiac surgery. People individually choose to be pediatricians, internists, pharmacists, lab technicians, and therapists in order to be of personal service — to make a positive personal difference in other people’s lives. Think of all the job classifications you see in the want ads seeking people to join us. Overwhelmingly, those jobs are caregiver jobs.
So, we begin both our organizational processes and our personal job choices around the delivery of care, and we have built our entire organization around care delivery. Our IT people who are building our robust new array of care support computer systems are also, in our new electronically-supported world, engaged in caregiving — and our IT people aren’t even in the 140,000 count of caregivers.
“But, don’t you also provide health coverage?” people sometimes ask me. “Isn’t health coverage at some level really what you do?” The answer is, “Yes, we also do provide health coverage.” We are both a health plan and a health care delivery organization. We definitely do provide health coverage for people, and we are proud to do that. But, the basic point that people very often miss is that, for us, coverage is very much a tool of care.
Why do I say that? Again, think of who we are. We provide health coverage so that we can help people get care. Health coverage for us is about making our care affordable, available, and accessible. Health coverage is an extremely important part of what we do as caregivers. Why? Because our caregivers could not and cannot deliver care and improve the health of our patients unless our marketing, sales, service and administration folks both successfully enroll members and competently serve members. Members are our patients. As caregivers, we need customers — including employers, trust funds, labor unions, government programs, and individuals — to buy our coverage. Then we need to make another sale, we need to get prospective members to choose us as their health plan so that we have patients to care for. Our health plan team sells to the customers and enrolls the members who become our patients. Our caregivers take care of those patients. It’s a good system . . . interlocking, interconnected, and mutually supportive.
So our health plan functions are fundamental and essential to our success — but they are absolutely not an end in themselves. While our membership is an important reflection of how well we meet the needs of our customers and members, we do not measure our success as an overall organization by our stand-alone achievements in selling coverage and enrolling members. Those are important achievements — but that is not how we judge ourselves. We measure our success, our value, and our organizational worth by how well we care for and improve the health of our members and the communities we serve.
A business magazine did an interview with me a month or so ago and asked the question, “Who is your most respected competitor?” I answered, “The Mayo Clinic.”
Mayo isn’t in any of our geographic service areas, so the reporter thought that was a surprising answer. So why did I pick Mayo?
When I look at the caregivers of America, Mayo stands out as an organization that is absolutely committed to medical excellence. I know Mayo well. Mayo puts the patient first all of the time. That is the secret to their success — being extremely patient focused. They also do a great job on research, teaching, and health policy leadership — and they, like us, have very carefully structured themselves internally to eliminate the potentially perverse financial incentives that are far too often an unintended but very real result of using fee-for-service mechanisms to set take-home pay for caregivers.
Mayo is well organized, very strategic, passionate about their ethical and medical standards, and extremely competent. So when I think of which competitors I most respect, Mayo comes to mind immediately.
We are on those same pathways. Mayo was a couple of years ahead of us in the incredibly important work of bringing electronic medical records and electronic support tools to health care, but I believe we are nearly caught up, and I expect us to pass them in the total capabilities of our system by mid-2009. We are on a pathway to be a world leader in use of our computers to support both health care and medical research. We are putting electronic support tools in place that will allow our brightest and best caregivers working in highly focused teams to re-engineer care — to bring health care into the universe of computer supported professions.
We are doing a lot of things right. We are actively promoting universal coverage. We are very much a leader in promoting both quality improvement and health status improvement. We are winning awards both for our own internal diversity and for our focus on helping America as a nation end ethnic disparities in care. We are rebuilding our infrastructure and our people are learning new skills that will allow us to become a national leader in capturing accurate data, and billing accurately, as well as a leader in health care-related SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) compliance. “SOX” is an important new way of making absolutely sure that we get all of our numbers right. It’s a new set of reporting requirements. Look at our Web site (http://kpnet.kp.org/sox/) for more information about SOX. We need to be not only technically “SOX compliant” but functionally “SOX excellent.”
We are just now learning to use unit-based teams to achieve excellence in performance in multiple areas. This is very important work. Extremely important work. It is one of the best and most important features of our pioneering Labor Management Partnership. Unit-based teams will let us achieve performance in a wide array of functions, areas, and operations in our caregiving activities.
We are also enhancing call centers, improving claims processes, and embedding “compliance” in our daily work flow. My request to our compliance staff four years ago was to “bake it in” so that we never have to face any of the compliance messes that so many other caregiving institutions have faced. As we are building our new systems, our compliance folks are at the table making sure we don’t have to go back and do major rework to “get it right later.”
We are on a learning curve in multiple areas across our organization. We are facing the exhilaration, excitement and worries of just starting up some learning curves, and we are facing the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that comes from having climbed the learning curve in other areas and being a leader in health care and health improvement.
If you think about your own work area, I suspect you can think of direct examples where we are on either end of an important learning curve.
Sometimes we make mistakes. When we do, we need to acknowledge the mistakes and take corrective action to reduce or eliminate the likelihood of repeating future errors. We provided charity care to 256,000 patients last year. We are proud of that achievement. We have enrolled more than 72,000 low-income people in our special dues subsidy programs — with many of the dues subsidized to the point of being free. Those are programs that we celebrate — and intend to expand.
Sometimes we make mistakes. As an organization of caregivers, we all feel collective pain any time we mis-deliver care. We did not choose to be part of a caregiving community to mis-deliver care.
We have, in total, more than 40 million in-person patient encounters each year. Our caregivers serve more people than the entire population of 136 countries. With that volume, we will have some errors. No one can be perfect 40 million times. We will have some cases that we would very much like to “do over.” When, despite our best intentions, an error or mistake negatively impacts a patient or a patient’s family, we feel tremendous pain. We need to learn from each mistake. We need to figure out what went wrong — and then we need to carefully re-engineer what we do to minimize or eliminate the likelihood that we will make that same error again.
We can’t be perfect 40 million times — but we can set that as our goal. We are moving toward the best scores in the country in areas like hospital infection rates, heart attack prevention rates, and breast cancer detection rates. Excellence needs to be our goal, excellence in multiple areas. We also need to be an organization of caregivers committed to continuous learning. In today’s rapidly changing health care world, anything less than continuous learning would be a mistake. Becoming the best in America at continuous learning is an achievable goal for us. It’s exciting and it is very much the right thing to do.
I have just finished my fifth year at Kaiser Permanente. I started to write this letter as a reflection on those five years. I continue to believe that Kaiser Permanente is a great place to be and that this is a great time to be here. And that is how I answer the question when people external to us ask me “What is Kaiser Permanente?” I tell them we are a community of caregivers — a group of people who first made the life choice to do good — to “make lives better” — and then made the career choice to do that good here. We need to celebrate and mutually reinforce the collective good that we all do.
We are actually doing many very good things that we do not celebrate among ourselves or with those we serve. For the next year, every week, on my Web site (http://insidekp.kp.org/insidekp /communicate/CEOhome/new_site), I am going to celebrate a different thing we have done really well somewhere in our organization. Last year, in various publications across the country, there were more than 5,000 positive newspaper articles and media stories that made positive references to us or that focused on specific things we did well. (A list of some of those stories is on our Web site — http://www.kp.org/newscenter.) People in the outside world read those individual positive stories about us in various local settings, but we did not share them with each other. It’s time to do some sharing with each other. We do not have a shortage of accomplishments to celebrate. We also don’t have a shortage of positive initiatives to talk about. Let me know if you have particular accomplishments that you believe we should be celebrating with each other.
I would love to hear from you. How are you doing? How are we all doing? Change can be stressful. We are, as you know, in the middle of much change both across the organization and in various work units. Keep in mind that when it’s well done, the results and rewards of well planned, well structured, well focused change can be excellent. And the result can be excellence. Excellence is a great goal to have.
Be well. And let me hear from you.
George
Well, do you want the truth George or would you like an answer that is reputation enhancing only (since skirting around the truth and presenting a false face to the public, not to mention deceiving and brainwashing your own employees, seems to be your primary motivation here)?
Let’s cut through the chase…
Well, that’s what I thought kaiser was supposed to do too but in reality what happened to me is I was sent home so that Kaiser could save money by WITHHOLDING care. KAISER WITHHELD CARE. THEY DID NOT PROVIDE CARE IN ANY WAY. This is the extreme opposite of what you say George. My Baby then died BECAUSE KAISER WITHHELD CARE.
Well George, I couldn’t agree with you more here but again this was not what I received. What I received was LESS CARE. LESS CARE=CARE LESS. I believe that’s what’s called NEGLIGENCE.
Yeah, but they have “Kaiser Care” too. KAISER’S OWN EMPLOYEES CAN’T EVEN GET DECENT CARE AT KAISER. Just ask my Baby Lehna’s father. He was a Kaiser IT employee and I heard from him daily of what a mess HealthConnect really was. Not to mention every single time I went in for a prenatal appt. the information that was keyed in previously by the healthcare worker just mysteriously vanished. I believe that is what is called HEALTHDISCONNECT. A health disconnect is potentially going to kill people.
George, why don’t you let me answer that one for you. It’s because you can continue to take your members money and then in turn withold care. This is how you reap a profit. Am I right George? Member $$$ + no care provided = profit. It is a formula that has worked time and time again for Kaiser. This is the secret to Kaisers success.
AND we feel such pain that the first thing we do is to rewrite history, tamper and destroy medical records to cover our tracks. We also train our employees to lie to state investigators and regulators on a regular basis.
Well, I wish this had been my experience with Kaiser because I might very well be out playing in the sun with my Beautiful Little Lehna instead of sitting here responding to your baloney George. Lehna would probably be saying lots of cute little adorable words and snuggling with our fluffy white cat “Willy.” Instead, I spend a lot of time trying to think of beautiful and respectful ways to arrange Lehna’s ashes in my private little sanctuary that I’ve created for her in my bedroom.
Well George, we did try to “be well” at Kaiser but you did everything in your power to prevent that by withholding care. You did hear from us too but we are still waiting to hear back from you. We’ll probably be waiting a long time.
The above letter by Mr Halvorson is very ‘Goebbelesque’…..
Seems the employees at Kaiser require MUCH reminding that what they are doing (refusing care, not following proper standard of care guidelines, misleading their patients, lying in their documentation, etc) is to be considered a good thing.
Propoganda only works on followers who, in and of themselves, are either very weak minded or hold the same ugliness inside their very being as the person presenting such false rhetoric.
Apparently Mr Halvorson is aware that he runs a company full of sheep, and he is intent on attempting to brainwash them a bit further.
I briefly dated a Kaiser ER EMT and he was so brainwashed that he would not/could not say anything negative about where he works…which is *not normal for most working people.* He did say that HealthConnect “doesn’t work very well” but as for the company, CEO, everything, there was that wall of silence. I recognized the effects of brainwashing and mind control immediately, because I am an ex-cult member.
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Well all this just makes me sick. Health Connect is ridiculous and so is Kaiser Permanente. I am attaching something I posted as a response to an earlier topic on this site but I think it is more appropriate that it be attached here.
I know so much about what is wrong with Health Connect, SO MUCH, and now that my fancy six figure plus who’s who career is shot
–thank you for allowing our child to die, tormenting my daughter’s mother, and misrepresenting her medical records so that I no longer want to work for a corporation any more–
I am happy to share EVERYTHING I know and suspect with anyone who will listen–in any forum and, trust me, it is not a picture of project excellence, by a long shot.
Here is what I attached to an earlier post: I hope some one will see it, pay attention to it, and do something to make this happen:
*******
I would like to add my own challenge to Mr. Halvorson and Kaiser Permanente.
It is well-known within Kaiser that I have SERIOUS (and I do mean serious) issues with Health Connect.
The methodological problems (and “attitude”) at Kaiser is one reason why I quit my job there (in addition to the primary reason–allowing our beautiful daughter to die and then hiding or misrepresenting critical medical records for Beth and our baby) and it is also why I went public with my concerns back in February in the Los Angeles Times. I have been told, as a result of my little speech in the newspaper, that at Kaiser “my name is mud”.
Of course, I haven’t read Halvorson’s book (although I did read some excerpts from it which, at a high level, I am in agreement with) but it seems to me (at least in what I have seen so far in the excerpts) as if what he is saying is very generic and there are no concrete plans that I see as to the actual implementation of his vision–a theme perhaps I have seen somewhere before, methinks.
I realize that I have only seen a small portion of his book but, in the part that I read, I saw nothing of any substance as to the hows and whys of “practically” implementing this plan.
He speaks about the need for “data” which of course I agree with. This is absolutely critical and a correct assumption.
But what he fails to mention is the need also for business rules for organizing and cataloging that data, as well as concrete procedural imperatives defined both within the context of the business itself and the full analytics for specific constraints of the application (as well as any feeder/legacy systems that may be tied to the application) in order for the associative properties of the data to be fully realized, within the context of defined clinical necessities.
Data means nothing without a fully and properly defined contextual framework.
As to the fiction that Health Connect is a “successful” implementation, as the wonderful words of praise for him and his book suggest, I beg to differ–unless he did two successful implementations somewhere else BEFORE KPHC.
In fact, I would be happy to debate Halvorson or anyone else from KPHC–anywhere, anytime– about the REAL untold story of Health Connect.
I have seen it myself, up close, too close, and of course I have my own opinions as to what is likely to happen–which I imagine is much different than the corporate spin.
Also, one side note. Halvorson mentions market incentives as a successful driver of reform. I could not agree more.
However, the current MICRA caps serve to encourage mediocrity and lack of quality care as there are no financial incentives for providing “good” service as opposed to mediocre service since there are no effective deterrents (penalties are also “incentives” driving quality assurance standards) in place driving compliance standards in a meaningful way.
In other words, the penalties are not big enough to worry about and until they are it is unlikely that much will change–to the betterment of Kaiser’s balance sheet and the detriment of many Kaiser members seeking quality health care.
Let me just say this one more time. I challenge anyone from Kaiser (and I do mean anyone) to debate me in a public forum about methodology and controls and what normally happens with a software implementation and what actually happened within KPHC.
Anyone. Anytime.
May 30, 1996, From Dr. Linda Peeno…
http://www.nomanagedcare.org/DrPeenotestimony.html
“The list could go on, however, there is enough here to suggest drastic needs for change. Of course, each of these would be vehemently contested by the managed care industry. If they are inaccurate, then it seems that the industry should have no reservations about supporting transparent and publicly accountable activities. We know, though, they do object to this. Why? Because control of patients and doctors depends upon unethical practices. To this, at least, we should object. Manipulation and exploitation for any reason, even beneficence, is unethical and destructive of social good.
We have enough experiences from history to demonstrate the consequences of secretive, unregulated systems which go awry. The list above is not new. In fact, it comes from a book detailing the characteristics of a dire period of recent history. The last time this combination of forces worked in concert, over 200,000 individuals lost their lives in Nazi Germany (even before the Final Solution). Most of these persons were German citizens sacrificed for medical reasons set by economic and social agendas. I find the parallels chilling. One can only wonder: how much pain, suffering and death will we have before we have the courage to change our course?
Personally, I have decided even one death is too much for me.”
I would have to agree with Linda Peeno. She gave her testimony before congress in 1996. Why haven’t we seen any changes?
Good clip…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqSshZZMHGA
Oh my gosh… have you EVER seen anything so ridiculous?
Check this out!:
http://www.functionalisminaction.com/
George Halvorson is absolutely crazy and a BLATANT liar.
To Anonymous:
Interesting about the EMT you dated. I dated a Kaiser M.D. (who is in management there). On our way out to dinner I questioned how Kaiser could possibly justify what they did in their organ donor program.
His response (besides becoming quite loud and immediately agitated at this question) was to tell me that ‘obviously’ the news was only telling part of the story and that he was ‘sure’ the situation warranted what Kaiser did.
I had to ask him why he became so upset when all I did was ask a question. He told me that Kaiser is ‘always misrepresented’ in the news and he was sick of it (my thought: ‘where there’s smoke, there usually is fire’). He told me that they were voted #1 in patient satisfaction for a reason.
Interestingly enough, He could not even discuss the moral or ethical issues of what Kaiser did to the patients in their organ donor program.
Why?….Well because, to him, Kaiser (whom he has worked for for many years) it seems is pretty close to being his “God”.
Brainwashed was what immediately came in to my mind. I have seen this in others who have belonged to cults (whether they be healthcare cults, religious cults or product selling cults). Good thing: Some get out and eventually spill the beans. Sad thing: Some never get out and continue their rampage under the guise of ‘caring for others’ and ‘knowing what’s best’.
It is was quite disconcerting to hear an M.D. immediately justify such lack of care towards others.
And yet, then again, this is the same Physician who stated that Kaiser wanted to become California’s socialized care giver. He intensely believed Kaiser would be the answer to California’s health care needs.
Brainwashed employees?….
For goodness sake, when one cannot logically assess or discuss the company they work for, or its actions….well, that basically says it all.
“He told me that they were voted #1 in patient satisfaction for a reason.”
Kaiser’s own data (page 4 of this internal Kaiser presentation) shows a patient satisfaction rate of 62%, from its market research prior to the Thrive campaign. That means a DISSATISFACTION rate of 38%, or well over 1/3. Only in American health care is 62% something to brag about.
Another interesting statistic, straight from another internal Kaiser document (see page 3):
There is a reason for this and it isn’t because they haven’t been brainwashed enough through advertising.
You can’t get any more evidence-based than this. Of course anyone who refuses to look can continue to pretend they don’t know.
“*I* think that having to sign away ones civil right to a jury for healthcare is a more important story)!!”
Absolutely!
Gee, it would be a real shame if Halvorson’s 5th birthday was his last.
Hmmm, wonder why he would want to distance himself from Kaiser.
There are a million reasons why he might want to distance himself from kaiser.
Maybe he knows it’s time to jump ship, AGAIN.
Our daughter Lehna’s death has been “big news” now for over a year as an example of just how bad the healthcare system can screw the little guy. Not much consolation to her parents. I was doing a search this morning on her name and found something I wrote just hours after Beth and I got back from the hospital when we were trying to find out anything we could about stillbirth–what caused it and how could anyone ever possibly get over it.
Here is, I believe, the very first thing I ever wrote about my beautiful baby:
Hello. Our beautiful daughter Lehna Jordann Brewer was stillborn today. We have only been home from the hospital a little more than 3 hours and our story is so similar to yours. Our angel was beautiful, beyond full term and with a perfect heartbeat and everything confirmed just two days before we found out that she died. Beth then had to be induced to give birth.
It was so sad yet our baby was so beautiful and precious and we spent 14 hours with her kissing her and loving her and telling her stories and “cow” jokes and flying her around the room. Sometimes the way we held her I swear that she smiled at me and I will never understand nor will her beautiful brave mother why our child was taken from us.
Your story helped us both because it rang so true to our experience today. Thank you and God bless you and your family and please think of us and our lovely little Lehna, too.
Sunday, March 5th 2006 – 10:08:28 PM
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Dear Lehna’s Mom,
You were kind enough to send me a message in reply to an answer I posted when it came to light that a patient died unnecessarily at one of Kaiser’s after hours care facilities in suburban Maryland recently. Because you are such a courageous crusader, I wanted to share what a Kaiser physician unwittingly told a friend of mine during a casual conversation about one month ago. The physician and my friend were discussing another physician who had recently left the organization. Apparently, this doctor had a cushy job working in the Provider Service Center where doctors are paid very handsomely to sit on their butts, drink coffee and DENY PATIENTS CARE. Apparently this now ex-KP doc didn’t deny enough care or something along those lines, because he was “DEMOTED” and sent back to take care of patients in the clinic at a substantial cut in salary!!!!!!****!!!! This tells you where Kaiser’s priorities lie – most definitely NOT with patient care!!!!! Working for this organization has been more than an eye opening experience. I wish I knew how to get in touch with Michael Moore.
My best to you and your family,
Junie
Hi Junie,
Thanks for the info and Thank You for sharing. Given the horrendous odds that we are up against with kaiser I feel that it’s very important to share our knowledge and alert others the best we can. Obviously, Kaiserthrive feels this way too. Kaiserthrive saved me, I can’t say that enough and I don’t know what I would have done without Kaiserthrive and people like you Junie!
Contacting Michael
If you have something you want to tell Michael directly, contact him at:
michael@michaelmoore.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/
(I had at one time, another personal email for Michael. I will need to dig around a bit for that).
From his website: Michael gets thousands of emails and does his best to personally answer as many of them as possible. Occasionally his email box “overflows” and you may get an error when trying to contact him. Please be patient and try sending your message to Michael again at a later date.
And if you are interested in contacting Erin Brockovich, her email is below. I have actually exchanged emails with her in the past. I have a personal contact phone number for her as well. She is from a town which is about 20 miles from where I grew up. I’ve heard from a reporter friend of mine who interviewed her about a year ago that she is very impressive and he had alot of respect for her.
erin@brockovich.com
She also has a blog:
http://www.brockovichblog.com/
I hope you are able to make contact. Keep us posted!
(ps. I also received a personal letter from Gloria Allred. If you would like her contact information i’d be happy to pass that along to you as well.)
Junie,
here’s another email address for Michael Moore:
MMFlint@aol.com
I am a former Senior Director of Performance Improvement at the National Program Office for KP in Oakland. This organization will only change when it has the courage to change and apply modern management techniques such a LEAN Processing and Six Sigma. The culture must change and except a new day. Having worked for the organization for just 3 months I am frustrated with the bloated waste and lack of commitment by leaders to change. I have left this company but have seen first hand the waste and sloth that propagate this institution for healthcare. Middle management prefers firefighting, upper management including those mentioned in this article are out of touch with reality. Most don’t even have a properly defined management dashboard to review an ice cream stand. They dont understand the processes and its drives let alone the process capability (Google this pls). The union is stuck in a time warp of the 70’s like the UAW when Toyota and Datsun landed cars in the 70’s. To the mgmts credit they half heartedly launch an ill concieved and Performance Improvement program based on fluff and pointed at the lowest level of the organization.
Did I mention G Halverson is a bonehead he cant manage a candy store.