Kaiser Permanente

While every city has its hospitals and medical clinics, few can claim they're the home base for one of the biggest health care providers in the country, and even fewer can claim that such a company rose up from local roots. However, this is exactly what Oakland is able to brag about. While other businessmen were off speculating in Toronto resale homes, Kaiser Permanente founder Henry J. Kaiser was creating the basis for one of the nation's largest HMOs. To learn more about this remarkable story, follow along with this article.

What is a HMO?

If you've been living in Milton, Ontario homes up until moving to the United States or if you're a citizen of another country that offers free health care, you probably won't be familiar with the term HMO. HMO stands for Health Maintenance Organization. It consists of a practice of doctors who agree to provide care for a specific group of people designated by the HMO. These patients often come from companies who have paid the HMO a fee in order to get them to provide health care services for the company's employees whenever they need them. In this way, a HMO acts like an insurance company.

The History of Kaiser Permanente

Although Kaiser Permanente wasn't the first HMO in the United States, it went on to become the largest. It was formed as the result of a partnership between Henry J. Kaiser, a construction contractor, and Sidney R. Garfield, a medical doctor, in order to comply with workers' compensation regulations. Kaiser and several other contractors would pay a certain amount of money on a regular basis to cover any potential work-related injuries, while the workers themselves also would make contributions to cover non-work-related injuries. In this way, the workers could go on building Kitsilano condos without fear of getting hurt and ending up being saddled with astronomical medical bills. All this happened in 1933.

Kaiser Permanente Today

From its modest beginnings, Kaiser Permanente rose to prominence as the largest managed care organization in the United States. It has facilities in nine states plus the capitol district and nearly 9 million plan members. The company has 156,000 administrative and support employees and 13,000 doctors in 37 medical centers and 400 offices. The company's revenue stream is in excess of 34 billion dollars every year, but despite this most of the company remains a nonprofit organization, with company funds going toward programs to create vaccines and study conditions like seasonal affective disorder. Hamilton, Ontario is another locale where SAD study occurs.