KAISER PERMANENTE: HOSPITALS RETAIN ACCREDITATION
Federal officials said yesterday that "Kaiser Permanente hasThis is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
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).