KAISER PERMANENTE: HOSPITALS RETAIN ACCREDITATION

      Federal officials said yesterday that "Kaiser Permanente has
 beaten tomorrow's deadline to improve care at its Walnut Creak
 and Martinez hospitals, avoiding the costly loss of its federal
 certification," San Francisco Chronicle reports.  B.J. Kibler of
 the Health Care Financing Administration said, "They are back in
 the program.  They meet the conditions.  It's more or less a
 pass-fail; it's not a grading."  Trouble at the Walnut Creek
 facility, which operates under a joint license with the HMO's
 Martinez facility, began in June "during a surprise inspection by
 health regulators" that found "problems with emergency room,
 record-keeping, nursing, quality assurance and administrative
 oversight."  Kaiser submitted a plan in August to correct the
 deficiencies, "but an inspection in September revealed that some
 of those problems persisted."  As a result, "Kaiser became one of
 the few hospitals to flunk a follow-up inspection and was warned
 that it would lose its federal certification to treat Medicare
 and Medi-Cal patients at the facilities unless it passed a third
 inspection."
      NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY
      However, "critics -- especially the nurses union -- said
 management has not fully corrected the problems of understaffing
 and quality control."  California Nurses Association spokesperson
 Chuck Idelson said, "It's hardly a badge of honor that Kaiser
 passed this scraping-the-bottom test.  They're a champion of
 mediocrity" (Hytha, 11/13).