This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Medical Practice  • Medical Practice, Other  • Humanities  • History of Medicine  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Geoffrey C. Nunes, MD

Arch Surg. 2002;137:1034-1036.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Henry J. Kaiser developed an extensive and complex industrial empire. During the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, he began an association with Sidney Garfield, MD, that resulted in the prototype of the modern health maintenance organization. Kaiser Permanente, directed by Garfield, survived a confrontation with organized medicine in the postwar years and then expanded rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time, an internal struggle for control and responsibility of Kaiser Permanente led to a successful reorganization of its health care system. Today, Kaiser Permanente is Henry Kaiser's most enduring legacy.

Ted O'Connell is the first president of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association (PCSA) to be affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. Although health maintenance organizations (HMOs) currently play a major role in American health care, many people are unaware of how these organizations began and Kaiser's role in this process. Thus, it . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Dr Nunes lives in Spokane, Wash.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?