Kaiser Permanente received good marks overall from its members, with some exceptions, in an annual state of California survey.
For the sixth year in a row, Kaiser, a Pasadena-based nonprofit with 500,000 members in San Diego County, received more stars in the Healthcare Quality Report Card’s overall HMO, or health maintenance organization, ratings section than all other plans.
“We are very happy with these high quality scores, and I am particularly proud of the outstanding, ongoing efforts our physicians and staff have put into providing the highest quality care for our members,” Kaiser’s San Diego County medical director, Dr. Arthur Flippin, said in a written statement. “Six years in a row demonstrates the commitment we have to quality as our basic way of doing business.”
But Kaiser’s Southern California Permanente Medical Group of San Diego scored lower overall than all but one other group.
The report card is conducted by the California Office of the Patient Advocate, created in 2000 to inform consumers about their rights and responsibilities regarding HMOs.
The report rates patient experience with health plans and medical groups. Quality of care was determined either from patient records and bills or through phone calls to members. More than 70,000 members were surveyed.
Health plans and medical groups were rated in categories like asthma care, heart care and diabetes care.
While Kaiser rated well overall with six of eight possible stars, its Southern California Permanente Medical Group of San Diego scored just two of a possible four aThe only other medical group to receive fewer than three stars was San Marcos-based Primary Care Associates Medical Group, which operates mainly from Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas, Tri-City Medical Center and UC San Diego Medical Center.
The HMO section also revealed that the Southern California region of Kaiser Permanente scored higher than all other HMOs for the rate at which they test for breast cancer. The Kaiser arm provided mammograms for 84 percent of its female members ages 52-69. However, Kaiser performed cervical cancer screenings at a lower rate than any other plan , 80 percent compared with PacifiCare’s 86 percent.
In meeting national standards for overall cancer screening, Health Net of California, was the only HMO that received three of a possible four stars. All other plans, including Kaiser, earned two.
The report card also compared how well California HMOs meet national standards of care compared to HMOs in other states. California HMOs met or exceeded the care in other states in every category except the following: Asthma for children and teens, follow-up care for illness after mental health hospital stays, treating children with throat infections and controlling blood sugar for diabetes patients.
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Law Could Help Local Firms:
Thanks to a new California law, insurance companies now must cover the cost of tests for Human Papillomavirus as part of cervical cancer screenings. The disease can cause genital warts or cervical cancer.
The law, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger late last month, is good news for two San Diego companies developing tests and therapies for the disease.
While Gen-Probe Inc. is developing a test that could be used by labs to detect HPV and hopes to have it on the market by 2010, Pharmex-Epimmune Inc. has done the preclinical work for an HPV therapy that could help those who already have the virus.
More than half of all people who are sexually active will obtain genital HPV at some point in their lives, according to the Food and Drug Administration and the National Cancer Institute.
The FDA approved the first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer due to HPV , the world’s most common sexually transmitted disease , in June. The vaccine prevents four types of HPV, two of which cause most cases of genital warts. The other two types are responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancer, which annually kills nearly 300,000 women worldwide and 3,500 in the United States.
Contact Katie Weeks with health care news at
kweeks@sdbj.com
, or call her at (858) 277-6359.
