Kaiser Permanente - Corporate Ethics

Please Note: CORPHQ Is Not Active

2010-12-20T23:33:16Z

I have not been maintaining this blog, largely due to health issues. I just came to check it because someone emailed me. I found there are many comments that remained hidden, and the notification has been going to a defunct email address. Some of the hidden comments have been here over a year, and they are heart-rending.

If anyone has a Kaiser story to tell, I recommend going to KaiserThrive.org.

Kaiser Cover Up of Baby's Death on Front Page of USA Today

2008-04-29T17:59:20Z

Here's the link to USA Today's front page story on the Kaiser Permanente Cover Up.

For more information on the death of baby Lehna Jordann Brewer, see Kaiserthrive.org.

USA Today Investigates Kaiser's Cover Up of Baby's Death

2008-04-28T19:36:49Z

Tomorrow, USA Today will be covering the tragic story of Lehna Jordann Brewer and Kaiser Permanente's habitual destruction of evidence. My condolences to Beth Stover and Andrew Brewer, who lost their baby to Kaiser incompetence two years ago, and who have had to endure the ongoing torture of Kaiser's evidence-tampering ever since.

Once again, I apologize for my long absence, and I hope people are continuing to track Kaiser's crimes against humanity at kaiserthrive.org.

Healthcare Blogging Summit 2007

2007-04-30T20:40:23Z

I made it to the Heathcare Blogging Summit, and my panel went well. Kaiser had been approached about sending a representative to participate on the panel, but apparently I scared them away. :D

There is a lot of talk about transparency and relating to bloggers, but I still get the sense that the health care industry is mostly interested in how to control or discredit bloggers. Matthew Holt thought that some areas of Kaiser had started to tiptoe in the direction of transparency, but I haven't seen one iota of evidence of this. Kaiser continues to use the same tactics against Justen Deal that they did with me: attempting to depict him as a hacker, fabricating reasons to justify firing him, etc.

I was intrigued to find out that Kaiser is still retaining Edelman as one of their PR firms - confirmed by Rick Murray, President of Edelman's new social media practice Me2Revolution. I wonder if Kaiser's contract with Edelman is specifically to manage the response to Justen Deal, or whether its about asserting more control over the social media environment in general. Expect to see Kaiser's virtual headquarters hosting events in Second Life soon.

There has been a lot of Kaiser news over the last month that I haven't been able to keep up with. I'd like to nudge people who are interested in keeping up with patient advocacy issues to check out www.kaiserthrive.org. I will be writing a big catch-up post, too.

One thing I have to mention, though, is that Justen Deal's story made the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

More to come later...

Baby Killed By Kaiser Medication Error

2007-03-12T18:10:24Z

Authorities are investigating a medication error that led to the death of a baby at Kaiser's Santa Clara hospital. The article cites three medication error deaths at Kaiser Santa Clara since 2004 - this number seems low to me, so I'm wondering what Kaiser does to re-catagorize other deaths. Here's another article.

To give an example of how far Kaiser is willing to go, check out the case of Lehna Jordann Brewer, in which Kaiser pursues evidence manipulation and cover ups galore. Lehna's father recently spoke out about Kaiser's HealthConnect debacle - the L.A. Times article mentions problems caused by outages in the Neonatal ICU.

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In other news, Kaiser is dumping Martinez for the more upscale suburbs of Walnut Creek and Antioch. Kaiser's Modesto project is waiting on a full deployment of HealthConnect. That's going to be a loooong wait - lol. The California Deptartment of Managed Health Care still claims to be investigating the problems with Kaiser's EMR.

Kaiser Thrive has also posted a visual aid for Kaiser nepotism. Among the many complaints about Kaiser HR is they look the other way as high level managers hire their friends and family.

ROTFLMAO: For some unexplained reason, Kaiser has rejected my application for Culture Change Leader. :D

Kaiser Kills...To Harvest Transplant Organs?

2007-02-28T19:33:41Z

The police are investigating whether a Kaiser surgeon hastened a man's death to get his kidney. I don't even know what to say to that.

Kaiser whistleblower Justen Deal has published an article about patient safety at Kaiser in The News is Now Public. If you think these issues are important vote for the article on Digg here.

I'd like to shout out a thank you to Matthew Holt for his recent help. I look forward to meeting him at the Healthcare Blogging Summit.

ROTFLMAO Update! Should I apply for this Kaiser job? Leave it to Kaiser to stomp on and priggishly ignore their critics while creating a new bureaucratic position to pretend like they're taking action. What Kaiser doesn't get is that Doing the Right Thing starts with...actually Doing the Right Thing. Further Update: Kaiser blocked and email-bounced my application for Culture Change Leader. Should I interpret this as Kaiser symbolically blocking culture change? :D

Here is the text from some recent Kaiser memos attempting to shape public perceptions of their EMR project. Is it possible to overdose on Koolaid? I'm not posting pdfs of the originals because I received them as text.

Important Announcement from George Halvorson, CEO Chief Information Officer (CIO) Appointment

February 26, 2007

I am pleased to announce that Philip (Phil) Fasano has joined Kaiser Permanente as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, effective immediately. As the leader of KP-IT, he will focus on the service, products and people essential to the success of KP’s technology agenda. Phil will be a member of the National Leadership Team and will report directly to me.

Sincere Thanks to Bruce Turkstra
I want to thank Bruce Turkstra for his excellent leadership during his tenure as interim CIO. As you know, Bruce also did a wonderful job overseeing the KP HealthConnect roll-out and advancing our electronic health record to where it is today. His valued contributions throughout the KP HealthConnect project and during his recent work in IT are greatly appreciated. Bruce will be working with me to develop and execute a transition plan.

Phil Comes to KP With an Impressive Background
Throughout his career, Phil has managed teams and organizations whose scope and complexity are very similar to our IT organization. His proven ability in a number of settings to interrelate system support and the overall strategy of the organization will be of great value to us. Kaiser Permanente will benefit from his business acumen, strategic approach and deep technical skills.

Phil has more than 20 years of corporate experience as a business leader and has successfully served as CIO for several companies including Deutsche Financial Services, JP Morgan Chase and Capital One. With each opportunity, he brought a transformational vision that was key to the evolution of the company’s business strategy and success.

Most recently, Phil was President and CEO of Capital Sourcing Group, Inc., in McLean, Virginia, where he provided advice, consulting and services to Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Phil received an M.B.A. from Long Island University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the New York Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Judy, have five children. They will relocate to the SF Bay area in the near future.

Please join me in welcoming Phil to KP, and in thanking Bruce for his strong performance. I am confident that we will all support Phil in our ongoing efforts to drive an effective technology agenda that enables optimal care for our members.

This is a broadly distributed message. Please do not reply.
Please share this message broadly with your peers.

A message to KPSC managers and physician leaders from
Benjamin K. Chu, MD, president KFHP/H, Southern California, and
Jeffrey A. Weisz, MD, executive medical director, SCPMG

The February 15 edition of the Los Angeles Times reported on concerns with the implementation of our Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect TM system, and questioned its safety.

Many of you have wondered where the reporter from the L.A Times received his information. He interviewed numerous people within KP including CEO George Halvorson and other national leaders. We also hosted him for a full day at Baldwin Park Medical Center, where he spoke with two of our physicians closely involved with KP HealthConnect. He also talked with nurses and other staff, and we gave him unrestricted access to our hospital and clinics with KP HealthConnect. While many spoke candidly of some of the earlier challenges, nearly everyone commented on the benefits the system provides to enhance care for our members.

We know, and the article acknowledges, that Kaiser Permanente has already improved the care for our members because of KP HealthConnect. After mastering the system, the overwhelming majority of our doctors and nurses agree that KP HealthConnect has improved their ability to deliver the highest quality of care.

No comparable scale electronic health record has ever been deployed so rapidly. With a project this large and an organization as diverse as Kaiser Permanente, we have had to overcome our share of obstacles. For the first time, all eight of our regions are operating on a common technology platform through KP HealthConnect. A change of this magnitude required significant IT infrastructure upgrades, as well as a level of cross-regional collaboration that had not been required to date.

This conversion also has had a profound impact on the day-to-day work of our physicians, clinicians, and staff. More than moving from paper to electronic processes, we did extensive examinations of workflows and care practices to optimize the care our members receive throughout our system. This has required significant training and support.

We have always been forthcoming regarding the challenges we have faced and overcome, as well as the success. We expected these challenges in infrastructure, deployment, and adoption given the size and scope of our implementation and we are pleased with our progress to date.

We thank all employees and physicians whose tremendous work has advanced us to this point in our system’s implementation. Your efforts, professionalism, and results make the difference in our ability to deliver and meet our members’ and patients’ needs in the 21st century.

Because you may receive questions about the article from members, family and friends we have provided a brief overview and a link to a Q & A regarding questions about KP HealthConnect below.

Sincerely,

Benjamin K. Chu, MD, MHA Jeffrey A Weisz, MD
President, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Hospitals Executive Medical Director, SCPMG

KP HealthConnect Facts

KP HealthConnect is Improving Care Delivery
KP HealthConnect's built-in treatment guidelines are helping us improve the management of common/chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. We are also improving patient safety by increasing the accessibility of the patient medical record. Industry studies show that a paper medical record is missing up to 30 percent of the time for an office visit and paper medical records are almost never available for patient care in an emergency room. With KP HealthConnect, the electronic health record is available when and where it is needed.

Because KP HealthConnect includes more comprehensive patient information, it is helping caregivers address multiple problems or the provision of multiple services in a single visit. This reduces the need for additional follow-up appointments.

Our new online features, such as secure e-mail to your doctor’s office, will bring our members unprecedented access to Kaiser Permanente care.

By logging on to kp.org, members now have the ability to address some of their needs online, instead of coming in for an office visit or spending time playing phone tag. Preliminary surveys show high satisfaction with these opportunities to save both time.

System Availability is Close to Our Goal
Our goal is to have KP HealthConnect available for use everywhere and every time it is needed to provide care and service to our members. Our goal for system availability is 99.7 percent. We currently average 99.2 percent and we are aggressively working to meet our ultimate availability goal.

We’re Continuing to Move Forward
The world recognizes the KP HealthConnect project as a groundbreaking tool that will allow us to set ever higher standards of health care. The dedication of our many outstanding professionals who deploy, support, or use it every single day ensures that we will meet the challenges ahead of us, and distinguish Kaiser Permanente as the best place to receive quality and compassionate care.

For Answers to Additional Questions
Go to the KP HealthConnect Web site for answers to additional questions.

How to Get Kaiser Permanente’s Side of the Story

Ever wish you could go online to get Kaiser Permanente’s side of the story when KP appears in the news? Kaiser Permanente’s Brand Strategy, Communications and Public Relations Department launched an external Web site accessible from KP.org on February 1 so that you can do just that.

The new Web site, KP News Center, highlights the latest news and commentary from across the Program and provides a channel for Kaiser Permanente leadership to tell KP’s side of stories that appear. For example, the feature story on the site today responds to an LA Timesnews article that describes KP’s electronic health record efforts.

The site is designed to inform audiences such as KP members and potential members, KP employees, legislators, purchasers and customers, and the media with facts and information. We are working to identify the best way to make the public aware of the news Web site.

The site also features stories on a variety of topics including Health Research, KP HealthConnect™, Community Benefit and Clinical Excellence. In addition to our own news features, the site includes links to other news sources, health resources on KP.org and Kaiser Permanente podcasts. Readers can also subscribe to news and receive regular updates through an RSS feed. Bookmark it now: http://xnet.kp.org/newscenter/index.html

Please be sure to check this site regularly for ongoing updates and information.

Thank you,
Diane Gage Lofgren

Kaiser Kills More Patients

2007-02-27T19:45:55Z

Holy cats - I look away five seconds and Kaiser accelerates its bad karma spree! First of all I'm going to direct everyone to Kaiser Thrive to read excerpts from articles that require registration, and I will link to the Kaiser Thrive posts in appreciation of all the work they do.

First, the L.A. Times reports that five Kaiser hospitals are deadly for people with pneumonia. Not exactly a surprise, but I'm glad the L.A. Times is continuing to buck the Kaiser-payola situation in California.

Second, Bruce Turkstra got dumped from the interim CIO position. The scuttle is that Turkstra made a number of changes based on the expectation he would keep the job, so I'm sure mucho membership $$$ were dedicated to his golden parachute/bribe.

Here's yet another Kaiser employee telling it like it is. I'm still waiting for a sign that Kaiser is actually getting the message. What Kaiser does to its own employees is unacceptable, and this mistreatment trickles down to sabotage patient care. Moreover Kaiser's practice of destroying evidence and choosing to manipulate perceptions over fixing the problem effects both employees and patients. It's a cultural problem, and this tone is being set by Halvorson and his team. UPDATE: The HealthConnect Corruption Scandal seems to be on fire!

In support of the letter posted by the Kaiser employee, I heard similar sentiments expressed about the situation from a completely different source. I think the abusive managers are going to have a tough time talking their way out of this one. And, once again, SHAME ON KAISER HR, for letting this sort of thing go on and for punishing the employees who try to seek help.

Congratulations to Justen Deal for being named Health Care IT's 2006 Industry Figure of the Year by the Hissies! ROTFLMAO!!!

Another ROTFLMAO - Kaiser sends out the PR panzer division in an attempt to roll over the L.A. Times expose of HealthDisconnect. Here is the internal Kaiser koolaid memo.

BizJournals ran an article on Kaiser's blogging strategy. Or anti-blogging strategy: it's just more gross attempts to manipulate the media. The article covers how Kaiser chickened out of the Health Care Blogging Summit once it found out critics would be on the same stage. The conference organizer pointed out that this is part of Kaiser's larger transparency problem.

I need a breather, but if there's recent Kaiser stupidacity that I missed, please post a comment, and I'll be happy to add it here.

Update: I almost forgot the funniest thing of all! Some Northern California Kaiser employee tried to hack into Kaiser Thrive yesterday! How lame! But also ROTFLMAO because the attempt is pretty bad.

Update2: Wow, my blog is under visitor seige right now! Hi to all newcomers. If anyone is so inclined, I'm trying to raise money so I can represent patient advocates at the Health Care Blogging Summit in April. You can chip in here. This blog has no advertising or sponsorship, and I don't work regularly myself (thanks to Kaiser). I would appreciate any help.

L.A. Time Investigates Kaiser EMR Fiasco

2007-02-15T14:50:41Z

An article in the front page times details the myriad problems with Kaiser's over-hyped and under-performing EMR. There have been many incidents putting patients at risk, including an infant in the NICU, and I hope this article helps patients understand why the technology issues are directly relevant to them.

However, what did the TV news report this morning? They parroted a Kaiser press release about their intention to launch the quote unquote "BIGGEST" health care study on diet and genetics. Don't the TV news editors even GLANCE at what's in the newspapers? This BIGGEST member survey is blatantly timed to distract people from and/or preempt the L.A. Times article. What a coup for the Kaiser PR people who had a hotline to the ABC news room, where the same pseudo-story about Kaiser's BIGGEST member survey has mentioned three times so far this morning, while the revelations of the L.A. Times article have not been mentioned at all.

Update: Kaiser's decoy story has now been added to the rolling headlines on the bottom of the screen! This is usually reserved important news alerts that need to continue to be communicated even when the reporters are talking about something else.

Once again Kaiser has chosen to exercise low PR tactics instead of addressing the problems. And once again the mainstream media has gone slithering after the money instead of bothering with the hassle of investigative reporting.

Kaiser must not be allowed to get away with putting PR before patients. To bring home how important it is to not let Kaiser substitute "thriviness" for problem-solving: I found out this morning that the Roseville cancer patient mentioned in my previous post DIED this morning. Even though the patient could eat, Kaiser withheld all medication except for morphine. Kaiser representatives claimed that the patient didn't need medication (for diabetes and a heart condition) because "his brain would take over". Two family members with M.D.s tried to intervene. One was allowed to speak to the attending physician, but no one was allowed to see the medical records.

The saddest part of all this is that Kaiser sowed dissension in the family by asserting that if the family moved the patient to another hospital, they would be stuck with a bill they could never pay off. Who knows what options the family would have found if they looked, but while they were trying to figure everything out, the patient died.

In other news, Kaiser lost another laptop containing the medical information of as many as 22,000 people. Why isn't this being reported instead of Kaiser's strategic deployment of the word "BIGGEST"?

For People Leaving Comments: An emergency came up, and it's hard for me to get to a computer to approve the comments. Please do leave your comments - I care about them a lot, and I think it's important for Kaiser to hear a community of voices. I will get to the comments as quickly as I can, and I will reply at some point during the day.

Kaiser Thrivicide!

2007-02-12T23:13:20Z

First, I want to thank everyone who has chipped in for my participation in the Health Care Blogging Summit. A few dollars from a lot of people builds up fast, and I'm now confident I'll have the money by the end April. :D

Now on to the horrific example of Kaiser Thrivicide that's currently being discussed everywhere. The patient had been going to Kaiser (Northern California - Roseville) for NINE YEARS, with the complaint that he had lost his sense of smell. The doctors I know say that any third year medical student would immediately consider the possibility of a frontal lobe brain tumor. However, as usual, Kaiser avoided doing the brain scan that's required to rule out that diagnosis (i.e. Kaiser didn't want to spend the money on the necessary test.)

After nine years, a Kaiser doctor finally ordered the tests, and of course the patient had a frontal lobe brain tumor.

Since brain tumors are expensive to treat, Kaiser elected not to consult with the person who had his Power of Attorney for the patient's health care, or anyone else: Kaiser sent the patient directly to a hospice without ordering any further tests or treatment!!!

When his family got to the patient, he was being pumped full of IV Morphine, though he had no pain symptoms! Apparently, even the costs of maintenance without treatment are too much for Kaiser. Suppressing respiration with Morphine will hasten death. And both the hospice move and what looks to me like attempted murder reduced the chances of the patient going to REAL doctors who might try to treat, or even cure this disease.

The patient's family (who have his Power of Attorney) want to move him to a hospital where he can be treated, but Kaiser has been trying to play the family members off each other instead.

The advocacy community is outraged because this is TYPICAL for Kaiser! The doctors at Kaiser avoid diagnosis of an expensive disease, and when its presence becomes impossible to deny, they declare it incurable without proper testing, and then rush them off to "Hospice" to initiate involuntary euthanasia.

This is NOT negligence! This appears to be a premeditated PLAN to save money at the expense of patient lives!

Yet Kaiser rates continue to skyrocket. Patients are paying $$$ for Kaiser's PR thriviness instead of health care!

I've pieced together the story from a number of emails - most of the above is paraphrased or directly quoted from my source. If I've misunderstood anything, I welcome corrections and will act quickly on them.

Kaiser Fakes Ethics, Endangers Employees

2007-02-08T20:20:14Z

Kaiser leadership recently distributed a memo on ethics to their organization, which you can read here. Since Kaiser hasn't taking any action whatsoever to address the incidents where people have suffered because of their ethical malfeasance, this memo is just blowing a lot of smoke. The disturbing part, though, is that memo tells employees they have a duty to report ethics violations. However, anyone who works for Kaiser knows that HR has a mandate to back managers under any circumstance, so managers will preemptively move to fire or otherwise retaliate against employees who even hint that there's an ethics problem. Kaiser needs to fix the HR problem first before ordering rank-and-file employees to put their jobs on the line.

In other news, the Labor Panel went very well, and hopefully whatever aired on local TV will soon be available online. I met Justen Deal for the first time in person, and we compared notes on our experiences. I still have hope that Kaiser will review the stance they took toward him, because putting him on unpaid leave for months for a well-intended criticism just makes them look like jerks who put political kowtowing before the good of anyone else - including patients as well as employees.

I have been invited to participate in a panel for the Healthcare Blogging Summit. This summit has brought to light the way corporate interests infiltrate and dominate the public voice - thus silencing, isolating, and delegitimizing critics. Corporate bloggers are paid: they are funded to attend conferences, and when they serve on panels they become known as "professionals" to be taken seriously. There are even corporate sponsorships for people attending the conference, so the HMO and Insurance industries actually *become* the blogosphere. Many corporate critics don't even have ads to support their blogs: everything they do is on their own time and out of their own pocket.

I was honored to be invited to be on a panel of the Healthcare Blogging Summit, and I hope my one determined voice won't be utterly swamped by the sea of corporate stooges. Interested parties can show their support in part by recognizing how some of the rising professional bloggers are being subsidized by corporate interests.

Lastly, somehow I missed that David Merlin settled his lawsuit against Kaiser last month. I'm sure there's a gag order involved, so this is a real loss to the public's right to know about what really happened during the kidney transplant scandal. :-(

Update: At the suggestion of a community participant below, I've set a ChipIn account to raise money for the Healthcare Blogging Summit. For anyone who makes a donation, thanks in advance for your support and please feel free to email me if you need help with a Kaiser-related problem.

Big Mega Kaiser News Review

2007-02-01T07:14:41Z

Here's a quick review of recent Kaiser follies:

Mary Ann Thode, long time President of Kaiser's Northern California region, is the latest to take the fall for Kaiser's recent troubles. Hopefully anyone watching will realize a few executive resignations don't make up for all the people who DIED after being bumped from the kidney transplant list.

Kaiser is putting even more emphasis on sales and marketing. Kaiser has also been buffing up marketing in Hawaii. When is Kaiser going to give up on the not-for-profit charade?

Matthew Holt notes Kaiser was caught with its hand in the cancellation cookie jar and offers some context for one of the most horrific aspects of the current health care crisis. More on the possibility of State oversighe here.

An anonymous source pointed out that Kaiser bigwigs are involved in what amounts to money laundering for supposedly non-profit health care executives. The Connecticut Attorney General has sanctioned the "Healthcare Research and Development Institute, LLC," fined it $150,000, and forced its closure.
The supposed "Institute" would funnel large sums of money from companies to healthcare executives. Kaiser participants include Dr. Thomas Chapman, the only "independent" Kaiser Foundation Health Plan director remaining who was involved in the hiring of George Halvorson and Dr. Benjamin Chu, the Halvorson hand-picked president for Southern California. Apparently, executives like Dr. Chapman and Dr. Chu were given tens of thousands of dollars and put up in luxurious hotels to entertain business opportunities from the pay-for-play business executives.

If someone has any idea how much Dr. Chapman and Dr. Chu received, please let me know. One thing is for sure: the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Board will actively ignore these ethical lapses, like they have the Halvorson-HealthPartners and "Compliance Officer" Garcia affairs.

That about wraps it up. Someone let me know if I left any important Kaiser news out.

Update: I left out this important article about how EMR "documentation" can easily turn into lying about the patient encounter. This is one of my biggest issues, and I hope more physicians will start to write about this issue. The EMR is not a panacea...in fact, it could amount to a lethal annihilation of patient rights.

Public Forum: The Kaiser Crisis and Where is Kaiser Going?

2007-02-01T06:20:22Z

On Saturday, February 3 at 2:00pm there will be a free public forum on The Kaiser Crisis in San Francisco. It will be held at the Community Room on 630 Valencia St./17th St. Here's the description of the event:

Kaiser Permanente, which covers millions of people in California, has been facing one crisis after another from the cover-up of their kidney dialysis unit to the firing of workers who stand up for proper heathcare and health and safety. This forum will have speakers from the trenches at Kaiser who have seen how it operates from the inside and how the system really operates inside and outside. Who is regulating Kaiser and where is Kaiser going?

Join with Kaiser workers, consumers and healthcare advocates:

Dina Padilla, for Kaiser SEIU 250 shop steward and Voices CA Chapter Pres. B.E.S.T.
Dr. Charles Philipps, Former Kaiser Doctor, author and critic Of managed care
Sharon Rushford, Fought a legal battle for her husband who was a patient of Kaiser
April Gottman, Ex SEIU 250 Kaiser employee and researcher

And...[drumroll]...ME as a Former Kaiser web worker and activist for Kaiser transparency.

Sponsored by VOICES CA, B.E.S.T.
California Coalition For Workers Memorial Day
Labor Video Project

I believe this is going to be televised on local Bay Area TV - will get back to you all on that.

If you attend or see it on TV, please feel free to post a shout out here!

I apologize for not being able to update for a few weeks. I've had a lot going on. This doesn't mean there's a lull in Kaiser misdeeds: I just have to play catch-up reporting on it. I'm going to post an update asap.

Kaiser Blackballs Nurse for Helping Investigators

2007-01-13T19:44:57Z

A nurse is suing Kaiser for denying her job assignments after she gave truthful testimony about patient dumping to prosecutors. It's difficult to find a lawyer who will take cases like this, so in all likelihood her case is pretty strong.

There's an easy way for Kaiser to become an organization that's better, stronger, and more serviceable to the public: stop retaliating against employees. All the droning on about "corporate culture" and "business ethics" and HR policies that promise no retaliation means NOTHING as long as Kaiser continues to in fact to retaliate. I would even argue that the very noticeable gap between Kaiser's PR-crafted messages and actions heightens the sense that employees are working in an environment where fraud is permitted, and even subtly encouraged.

Also, someone who lost their job at KPIT under dubious circumstances has been posting comments about their campaign to raise awareness of corrupt HR procedures. I hope this person will contact me with more details about the situation. If KPIT workers really are banding together to sue over how they were treated during the tumultuous HealthConnect re-org, then I want to be the first to wish them luck and offer my support.

Deadbeat Kaiser Robbing Other Hospitals, Bribing Politicians

2007-01-04T22:36:33Z

Kaiser is being sued by Tenet Healthcare for $16 million - for refusing to pay or underpaying hospital bills between 2000 and 2004. Tenet claims that the financial viability of its own health care operations have been undermined by Kaiser skipping out on payments. This is amazing since Kaiser has reserves in the BILLIONS.

Anyone ever wonder how the world would be changed if health care dollars actually went into health care?

Instead, Kaiser is investing patient dollars in THROWING PARTIES FOR POLITICIANS. Isn't 2007 supposed the year of political ethics reform? Why should $50,000 worth of Kaiser's patient's money go toward bigwig partying? Do patients really think that Kaiser is representing them in the lobbying process? No - Kaiser is representing the career and financial interests of its core group of physician shareholders. As usual, the rich get ahead by using the dimes of the poor - and in this case with the added twist that the money comes from a captive population just trying to plan for sickness and injury.

Update: HISTalk has a fun conspiracy theory regarding Kaiser's "planned outages" (I added the bold for emphasis):

Hopefully you Kaiserites got through Saturday morning's HealthConnect downtime. I understand it was planned, but as the announcement said, "During this planned outage, all NCAL KPHC users in these impacted hospitals will be on FULL DOWNTIME procedures. Clinicians can refer to CIPS for patient clinical information during this outage. We expect this outage to take less than 60 minutes. Note: KPHC Shadow Read Only functionality will NOT be available during this outage window, since it is expected to be a short outage." Maybe there's a good reason not to use available downtime capabilities, even for just one hour, but I don't know what that would be. That's a good way to discourage mission-critical use (or to encourage secret paper recordkeeping.)

Update of Moral Astonishment: Why is Kaiser hesitating about pulling their ads from a radio show filled with wingnut hate speech? Does Kaiser really make enough money off those ads that their business deathstar-heads would even have an argument? Is it possible for Kaiser to reach lower levels of suckitude?

Update of Unsurprise: HMO managers score low on perceived ethics.

Kaiser's New Year's Resolution: Boost Marketing and Sell, Sell, Sell

2007-01-03T22:03:33Z

Kaiser CEO George Halvorson has besieged employees with his ~~propaganda~~ talking points for 2007. The memo focuses on the media, highlighting three or so articles ~~planted by Kaiser PR~~ that mention Kaiser in a positive light while aggressively ignoring all the horror stories such as the 139+ people who died because of bureaucratic snafus in Kaiser's new kidney transplant unit, patient dumping on skid row, and the laptop follies that released the personal data of tens of thousands of people out into the wild.

Toward the end of the memo, Halvorson forgets he's working for a ~~dummy corporation tax shelter~~ not-for-profit and urges Kaiser ~~slaves~~ employees to keep pushing for the money:

Progress is being made for both our market presence and our ability to successfully administer the new products we are selling.

Halvorson is the leader of the largest HMO in the U.S. and one of the most powerful voices in the future of U.S. health care policy. Shouldn't his "vision and direction" for 2007 have something to do with providing for patients instead of brand-building and selling?

Kaiser's New Approach to Compliance: Use ALL CAPS!

2006-12-29T18:02:59Z

Kaiser's California credentialing department (responsible for tracking physician board certification, continuing education, etc.) has been demanding that the professional staff sign and fax back the following statement:

I AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE BYLAWS and RULES & REGULATIONS OF THE PROFESSIONAL STAFF for KAISER FOUNDATION HOSPITAL EAST BAY, OAKLAND/RICHMOND CAMPUSES AS NOW ADOPTED AND AS AMENDED IN THE FUTURE, and THE LAWS & REGULATIONS OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

No one I've talked to has ever seen anything like this before. Moveover, no copy of the BYLAWS and RULES & REGULATIONS, which may change at any time, were circulated with the signature-required form. Therefore Kaiser expects people to sign off when they have no way of knowing whether they are in compliance: this is what Kaiser did with HIPAA (patient privacy) training, too.

In speaking of privacy, if you ask Kaiser to restrict your medical records, they have a policy to ignore your request. This policy seems pretty silly given that one of the main justification's of Kaiser's 3-4 billion dollar (and counting) Electronic Medical Records (EMR) project is to create centralized access to patient data. I.E., the patient data shouldn't "reside in many locations" anymore. Also, people should keep this article in mind the next time a Kaiser doctor suggests they try a "free" therapy appointment before proceeding with any diagnostic tests.

Kaiser has already started to share medical records with the State for law enforcement purposes. If this gets to the point where patients are afraid to trust doctors with their medical problems, what will the alternative be? Will there be two medical establishments - the "official" establishment that constitutes a form of surveillance, and an underground medical system where actual treatment and care happens? By the time we have universal health care, it may not even matter in terms of where people actually go for help!

In other news, Kaiser PR is still busy trying to retroactively demote whistleblower Justen Deal to a mere peon shuffler of brochures, fliers and posters. I predict that when Justen eventually gets the paperwork converting him to unpaid leave, he will find out he's been the janitor of the lowest level of the parking garage all along!

Update: Someone just pointed out to me that the signature-form might actually be related to Kaiser sharing medical records with the State - i.e., physicians are being put on notice that they have to comply.

Hospitals Required to Train Whistleblowers!

2006-12-25T01:50:09Z

The U.S. government is going to bat for health care fraud whistleblowers. It's a Christmas miracle!

The funniest part of that article is where representatives of the health care industry disassociate "technical non-compliance" from breaking the law.

I'm now taking bets on how long it will take Kaiser to implode under the weight of it's own enablement of "technical non-compliance". Kaiser already has a policy of non-retaliation: it's just that neither managers or their HR advisors follow that policy. Right now it's just too easy to destroy or insert evidence to hide the retaliation. What I'd like to see is Kaiser publicly admit that this is their problem and take steps to protect their most vulnerable employees in the future and make an honest attempt to remedy some of the retaliation that they've allowed managers to conduct in the past. The consequences of Kaiser's past bad acts isn't going to go away: it's just going to lead to more efforts like Grassley's to implement public oversight.

Also, NYCEve - a "citizen journalist" that writes about health care for the Daily Kos - had named Justen Deal a Hero of 2006. Thank you for taking note of what Kaiser does to whistleblowers, NYCEve!

Kaiser Cranks Up Bully Tactics: Retaliation Against Whistleblower Justen Deal

2006-12-20T20:03:22Z

Late Friday evening, Justen received an email from HR leader Wayne Cassard of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan that attempted to bully him into an ~~interrogation~~ "investigative interview" without the benefit of counsel or a written record. This email THREATENED to convert Justen to unpaid administrative leave if he didn't comply.

Note that Justen does not actually work for KFHP (he works for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group which contracts with KFHP), and the email was issued late Friday with a Monday deadline in a blatant attempt to reduce the time Justen would have to seek advice.

Justen opted not to participate in this ham-handed attempt at a set up, and thus he was placed on "unpaid leave" yesterday (Tuesday, Dec. 19). Unpaid leave is an interesting concept: if Kaiser retains any authority to compel him, does that constitute slavery? If Kaiser is no longer acting as Justen's employer, then he has been effectively terminated and should have an iron-clad wrongful termination claim, given Kaiser's published "non-retaliation" policies.

Justen has now issued a statement about his experience with Kaiser's faux investigation procedures. The most interesting revelation is that Kaiser CEO George Halvorson pushed to retaliate against Justen immediately, but Justen's employer demurred and attempted to insulate itself from the wrongful termination issues. Halvorson's crew then put together their own investigation so they could circumvent and preempt SCPMG's HR procedures. In Justen's words:

On November 3, George Halvorson demanded that I be terminated immediately. In an attempt to limit its legal liability, my employer, SCPMG refused. Instead, KFHP is now taking advantage of essentially-complete leeway to attempt to threaten and coerce my "compliance" with a process that I have reasonably objected to and that, I believe, is being conducted with little integrity and even less objectivity.

...It is clear to me that it is time for our organization to ensure that the interests of Kaiser Permanente are being protected, not the interests of George Halvorson.

...If you believe, as I do, that my employer, the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, must ensure that this process is conducted thoroughly, accurately, and objectively, with integrity and honesty, then please, share your concerns with the SCPMG Board of Directors, and please ask them to step in to ensure these problems are immediately corrected. Please email Dean Chang, secretary of the SCPMG Board of Directors, or call his office at 626 405-6287.

I would like to point out that Justen's experience with Kaiser are COMMON and WIDESPREAD. Kaiser's efforts to wear Justen down by drawing out the investigation process, to isolate Justen and game his disadvantages, to retaliate against Justen and whip out the overt threats when more discreet attempts at bullying failed - these tactics have all been experienced by many other workers AND patients who are subjected to Kaiser's rigged arbitration system. This persistant bad behavior of Kaiser's is what is fueling the complaints, the blogging, and the desperate attempts to put aside arbitration and file real lawsuits against Kaiser.

I hope Justen's brave decision to allow the email from Cassard to be published and present his own account of Kaiser's bully tactics over the past two months will raise public awareness about these problems. Better yet, I hope the public is stirred to OUTRAGE as they finally realize how Kaiser's organizational problems damage patient care and drive up the cost of health care for everyone.

Update: Kaiser is responding to media questions about the retaliation against Justen with lame prepared statements.

Update 2: In light of the IRS questions being raised, Kaiser employees who have access to accounting-related evidence might want to think about whether they're in a position to bring a qui tam suit. Just recently another Kaiser employee got $225,000 out of a qui tam action.

More Kaiser Abuse of Injured Workers - KP LAWYER WATCH

2006-12-20T08:06:52Z

I just read a recent case of Kaiser legal harassment of an injured employee. The issues involved in Donna Yee-Sanchez vs. Permanente Medical Group are so crucial that it's listed under the significant panel decisions on the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board web site. Since anyone can read the background and the legal opinion regarding this case, I'm just going to cover some of the slimy Kaiser tactics revealed here.

* The worker didn't have a lawyer and could have been tricked by Kaiser into doing something that was only in their interest and might have deprived her of her rights at any time.

* Kaiser didn't accept the initial diagnosis of a qualified physician, and they demanded a "redo" in which they forced the injured worker to choose from three Kaiser-approved physicians.

* When the second physician confirmed disability, Kaiser went into legal-harassment mode.

* The injured worker refrained from submitting to a deposition because Kaiser hadn't filed the necessary application to initate procedures with the Worker's Comp board (i.e., Kaiser was trying to be legalistically intimidating without any judicial oversight in play).

* Kaiser managed to get a deposition out of the diagnosing physician even through they didn't have any right to it.

* Kaiser continued to try to squirm out of initiating formal procedures: i.e., they wanted to get away with legal-esque intimidation without adhering to any rules or procedural oversight.

* If I'm reading this correctly, the diagnosis of the second doctor may have entitled the worker to higher disability compensation - but Kaiser, after putting the worker through the hassle of the second diagnosis, was still paying the original rate.

* The only thing this Worker's Comp board decision does is offer the remedy to address Kaiser's sleazy tactics: the worker can apply to initiate the WCAB process herself - and then there would be some oversight with the power to sanction Kaiser's bad behavior. While the injured worker might be worried about engaging with this process without an attorney, the board notes that sanctions might cover attorney fees. Still, since it's an adversarial process, it's not a sure thing that attorney fees would be covered. I'm curious about what the worker decided to do.

The Workers Comp board provides an excellent summary of the whole tangle:

...it appears (without actually deciding the question) that PMG far overstepped the bounds of proper and non-compelled investigation and ventured far into the realm of unquestionably unlawful pre-application discovery....[I]t is only the jurisdiction and authority of the WCAB that permits depositions to be noticed and taken (and subpoenas to be issued) in workers’ compensation matters....Accordingly, once an application is filed (if one has not been filed already), the PWCJ (or any other WCJ ultimately assigned to the case) should consider exercising the post-application remedies discussed above, including but not limited to monetary and evidentiary sanctions, for PMG’s apparent pre-application abuses of discovery.

Gee, this sort of reminds me of Kaiser spending two months investigating me after the Office of Civil Rights gave them my name as a whistleblower, without ever checking the prominent telltale dates on the documents involved or attempting to contact me for clarification.

Basically, Kaiser can afford lots of lawyers, so they can afford to game the system and bully people with just the threat of a lawyer attack (implied by ~~interrogations~~ depositions).

A further issue in the San Francisco Bay Area (i.e. Kaiser Territory), just about every lawyer who even touches on health care in the course of their practice has accepted work from Kaiser - making it very difficult for any individual who is trying to defend themselves to obtain a lawyer even if they can afford $300-$500/hr. (because conflict of interest could get the lawyer disbarred). Even if your case has nothing to do with health care, the "health care angle" (and Kaiser's deep pockets) will scare off lawyers who pursue other specialties.

***********

Did anyone else notice that the Business Times is now speculating on Kaiser's potential financial insolvency?

And here's another article on Kaiser turning tail when the going gets rough for patients. This time the victim is a boy with brain cancer.

In other news, Kaiser embezzler, political bribe-taker, and apparent massage-addict Leland Wong failed to overturn his indictment. Dear Kaiser Honchos - this sort of malfeasance TRICKLES DOWN FROM THE TOP!!!

Kaiser/Employer Alliance Against Injured Workers

2006-12-15T02:37:45Z

In 1996 California's State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF = Worker's Comp) allied with Kaiser Permanente to reduce costs associated with injured workers. Kaiser is still SCIF's "preferred provider", though SCIF started to add a few Blue Cross physicians last year as a token alternative to the Kaiser monopoly. Since Kaiser is also in the business of selling insurance to employers, there's a patent conflict of interest: employers aren't going to buy insurance from a health care provider that takes the side of their employees and costs them money. And of course no one gets shafted worse than injured Kaiser workers in this situation.

Recently a woman contacted me about her Kaiser/Worker's Comp ordeal, and I hope that posting some of her experiences will raise awareness of how rotten the SCIF/Kaiser alliance is for workers. Since she wishes to remain anonymous, I will call her Jane Doe.

Once upon a time Jane Doe went to Kaiser, the health plan provided by her employer, to be evaluated for workplace-induced stress so she could establish the medical justification that would allow her to transfer to a different department. At Kaiser she was assigned to a "work clinic" therapy group - one of Kaiser's innovations to reduce the costs associated with Worker's Comp. Jane Doe participated in the clinic for approximately three months. (Note: Corrections in this paragraph made at Jane Doe's request - she did not apply for Worker's Comp).

One of the other injured workers assigned to the clinic notified the social worker in charge that he was planning to file a Workers Comp claim for emotional distress, and he asked the social worker to provide a copy of his records and testimony for his hearing. The social worker then informed the entire group, I will never testify for you. We do not go to court for you, do not expect us to. We do not testify in courts for employees - only for employers. And we do not record everything, we do not keep detailed records. We do not record our own conclusions - we only say that "this is what you told us."

The social worker also said that Kaiser used to provide a "service" of "evaluating" Workers Comp stress claims. Kaiser had to shut down this particular operation altogether after having been sued by a labor union for either dismissing or declaring "not work-related" virtually 100% of the claims they "evaluated". (Note: This is the testimonial of Jane Doe - I don't have any further information about this program or the union lawsuit.)

At first the social worker sounded sympathetic to Jane Doe, who was traumatized by her own situation, and the social worker agreed that Jane Doe should transfer to a different department. However, when Jane Doe mentioned that she had a well-documented paper trail of misconduct by her supervisor to support her request, the social worker turned around and recanted her previous support. She refused to cooperate with Jane Doe's attempt to transfer UNLESS she went through Kaiser's mandatory condition of undergoing THEIR "forensic testing" to diagnose her with "some sort of mental illness or personality disorder" (the social worker's words). The social worker continued: We need to diagnose you with something *psychiatric*, you'll have to take our written evaluation, answer some 500 questions or so, and you will have to talk to our doctor about some medications. You don't have to take medications if you don't want to, but we have to prescribe something for you.

Jane Doe realized immediately that this would destroy her legal standing, since the first thing every attorney and every "independent medical examiner" asks is about history of any "mental health treatment" and "having ever been prescribed psychiatric drugs". The social worker had already confirmed that any RX prescribed by Kaiser would NOT be used in Jane Doe's defense - only in her employer's!

Jane Doe reminded the social workers of her previous warning about Kaiser "not keeping detailed records", "not providing their conclusions" and "never testifying in court for employees." Instead, Jane Doe requested that if any testing was needed, it should be done by an independent provider who would be able to testify in court on EITHER side and DOES keep accurate records. The social worker's response was to kick Jane Doe out of the work clinic.

There is a happy ending for Jane Doe. She filed a lawsuit against her employer. During the discovery stage, she agreed to undergo an "independent medical evaluation" by an "expert" of her employer's choosing. That gave her the chance to take a glimpse at her Kaiser medical records. She found out that:

1) Kaiser had early on violated her written request NOT to communicate with her employer.

2) While Kaiser did not record her words (re: Kaiser's careful avoidance of anything that could be used as legal evidence on the employee's behalf, they INSERTED into her file things she'd never said! For instance, they claimed she had expressed "suicidal ideation". Jane Doe avers that she has never, ever contemplated, discussed, planned or made any attempts at taking her own life: the only thing she mentioned was that she wanted to transfer out of her toxic workplace. However, that little "suicidal" insert gave her employer the much-needed pretext to subject Jane Doe to a "fitness-for-duty exam". In the end, though, the bullying and corporate scheming came to naught. Jane Doe won the lawsuit.

*********

Personally I think Jane Doe also has a strong HIPAA complaint against Kaiser. In terms of Kaiser's propensity to "position" potential litigants as mentally ill - I know someone who filed a complaint with a State agency because some of her medical records disappeared when she needed to point to previous malpractice as a justification for corrective surgery. She only got her medical records after Kaiser reviewed them, and when she got them, a prescription for anti-depressants from years earlier had been put on top. She filed a HIPAA complaint about this TWO YEARS AGO, and the Office of Civil Rights still hasn't gotten to it.

Kaiser seems to be constantly scheming about how to disadvantage patients in case of any litigation. A Kaiser Physical Medicine Questionnaire obliges physicians to record whether the patient is involved in litigation:

What could impending litigation possibly have to do with diagnosing a medical problem?

Over a year ago I pointed out that Kaiser was coaching physicians on litigation-safe documentation. Kaiser told physicians that litigation is "not a search for truth", and thus physicians might as well get a head start constructing an edifice of untruth that will win in litigation. Another acquaintance of mine attempted to get the California Supreme Court to overturn a Kaiser arbitration decision that had been based on physician lies, to no avail.

In short, Kaiser and the physicians that contract with Kaiser have too many conflicts of interest to be allowed to control what happens to employees who apply for Worker's Comp. Injured employees must be allowed to obtain claims evaluation from unbiased physicians who would not benefit financially from suppressing the claim, declining to testify on behalf of employees, or tampering with medical records on behalf of employers or for the sake of "cost reduction".

Kaiser Does the Usual: Deny, Deny, Deny...

2006-12-14T16:07:08Z

Kaiser Thrive pointed out that Kaiser has lost its good standing with UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) for "effectively denied patient access to kidney transplantation and threatened safety for patients on its waiting list." The L.A. Times article quotes Dr. Sue V. McDiarmid, president of UNOS:

At the time [of heavy press coverage], a top official of the HMO publicly apologized for the problems. But during the closed-door hearing Wednesday, Kaiser representatives struck a different tone...."I wouldn't characterize their position to us as acknowledging major errors," McDiarmid said. At times, she said, Kaiser officials actually denied that there had been serious lapses.

Kaiser's Blogger Relations Strategy

2006-12-13T22:06:26Z

Over the last week I've toured the health care blogosphere to express my concerns about the recent Healthcare Blogging Summit. My chief concern was that the Summit reinforced the credibility of PR bloggers and other professionals (physicians, lawyers, consultants, etc.) who already enjoy the advantage of being backed by corporate resources and favored by the mainstream media - while helping to further marginalize and suppress bloggers who are trying to criticize corporate heavyweights. The focus of blog-inclusive news aggregators like Memeorandum and Tailrank on A-List blogs has further served to magnify the blogs blessed by the business world while reducing the potential of the blogosphere as a whole of serving as a vehicle for alternative points of view.

To my surprise, several of the organizers of the Healthcare Blogging Summit responded to my concerns thoughtfully, and they had actually hoped for more representation of alternative and critical viewpoints on the panels. One organizer, Fard Johnmar, interviewed me.

Fard also points out Kaiser's recent foray into "blogger relations":

Kaiser is very interested in working with bloggers and may even deploy its own public facing blog in the future. As a result, they are very interested in working with bloggers to communicate their position on the Deal e-mail and other issues.

Kaiser employees have also been attending blogging and social media conferences. This is part of my complaint: Kaiser is trying to hijack the platform for communication and block or swamp criticism instead of addressing it. Kaiser can throw money and hordes of employees at this endeavor: the people with the technical skills and willingness to put in herculean amounts of unpaid work to hold onto a place for alternative points of view are very, very few. Kaiser already gets to push their story through canned news. They should leave the blogosphere alone.

**********

In other news, Matthew Holt has started to cover Kaiser's health care plan for California. Strangely, this is not the money-grubbing plan that Kaiser CEO Halvorson proposed last month in his capacity as chairman of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Perhaps it's more geared to reinforce the proposal that Don Perata, the Dem leader of the CA Senate who also represents Oakland (re: Kaiser's HQ). Honestly, I can't tell from either article. Maybe everyone is just trying to get on the health care bandwagon, and speed of soundbyte is more important than actually making sense.

**********

LOL! Kaiser wants to get into the "Web 3.0 killer app" couples counselling business....?

Those Kaiser IT Drama Queens

2006-12-11T18:13:56Z

More Kaiser EMR outages are detailed in this article. After asserting that Kaiser physicians don't care about improving the EMR as much as he does, Kaiser's Interim CIO Turkstra lowers his goal for EMR uptime to 99.7% (in the talking points document Kaiser circulated about Justen, the goal is held to be 99.9%). 99.7% is actually pretty low - remember, incidents don't "average out" - an average of 4 minutes a day could mean half an hour during the week.

The article describes several "critical patient issues", including a baby endangered in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), but Turkstra dismisses the wording of the incident report as "dramatic". Yep, those tech support folk are some of the most drama-prone people in the working world. Every time someone loses an email at Kaiser, 15 guys run in little circles, screaming and tearing their hair out. ;-)

In other news, a doctor describes frustrations with the Kaiser system from the patient point of view:

Dr. Min Su said he found it hard to believe when patients expressed frustrations in dealing with the health system for which he worked. This week, the Modestan found himself in those patients' shoes, battling the system after an insurance flap caused his premature twins to be split between two hospitals [Kaiser wanted the weaker of two twins to be moved to a Kaiser hospital]....The Kaiser health system did not literally "require" the transfer, but a case manager said the parents would have to pay for the charges [if one of the twins remained at an outside hospital]...

..."I heard a lot of patient complaints about Kaiser," Su said. "Now, I realize they provide good care for the healthy patients, but when the big one comes, they don't care. They just care about saving money."

...As a former physician for Kaiser, Su said, he was able to appeal to officials in Kaiser management to resolve the issue, something that is rarely possible for regular patients...."I got nowhere going through normal channels," he said. "I can see it is frustrating for people who are looking for help and don't know where to go."

Lastly, has anyone been reading the story of Abu Ghraib whistleblower Joe Darby? This poor guy can't even go back to his own hometown because everyone thinks he's a rat who betrayed his buddies for handing over PICTURES OF PEOPLE BEING TORTURED FOR KICKS. What is wrong with this country? Silencing whistleblowers (including discouraging them through loud humiliation and abuse) and hiding such atrocities helps perpetuate them. And this isn't just about a few people who were unluckily subjected to torture - though that should be reason enough in a civilized society - it's about whether we want the respect and admiration of the rest of the world. That respect and admiration has to be earned: the world is not a high school where Americans automatically get the privileges of being pretty and popular just because they can afford a nose job and a new car.

Update: A little birdy pointed out that the Business Times included a wonderful wrap-up of the mystery of the phony press release on Friday.

If it turns out to be a complete con job, it's a darn good one: Not only did the writer capture PR-speak perfectly -- he/she also knows an awful lot about Kaiser. All of the names and titles check out. Korn/Ferry, the search firm listed, is the one Kaiser used last time its top job was open. The media contact number listed is the real one. And Kaiser frequently uses PR Newswire to pump out its actual news releases.

Web 2.0 and Social Media to Help Whistleblowers: 7 Tips

2006-12-09T00:04:31Z

The rise of social media has been a powerful tool for whistleblowers. One video on YouTube can be heard around the world, getting the concerns of the whistleblower out before corporate PR departments can shape public perceptions. This means the public is in an unprecedented position to help whistleblowers.

Whistleblowers make a terrible sacrifice when they take their concerns public. While corporations have the PR and legal resources to punish whistleblowers for stepping out of line, the public rarely steps up to protect whistleblowers because they have mixed feelings about anything that shakes the status quo.

Whistleblowers internalize the public ambivalence: I, for one, never promoted this blog for my own case - it was mainly just here for interested parties, and it gave me a way to respond when the mainstream media was propagating Kaiser PR. However, for the sake of another Kaiser whistleblower, I've made more of an effort recently. As part of that effort, I thought it might help to be explicit about what readers of this blog can do to help.

First, here's WHY you should help:

1) Are you against letting corporations destroy, re-arrange, and manufacture evidence to "manage" a favorable outcome to a situation?
2) Do you believe that whistleblowers should be able to rely on basic protections from corporate retaliation?
3) Do you want government oversight agencies to expedite acting on whistleblower complaints, quickly apply whistleblower protections, and remedy any initial mistakes they made that harmed the whistleblower?
4) Do you think whistleblowers should be able to freely express their concerns without needing a lawyer?
5) Do you believe the media should report on matters of public concern instead of helping corporate PR abuse or frame whistleblowers?
6) Do you believe the media should rapidly correct of matters of fact, even if the whistleblower is a person of no power or influence?
7) Do you want to prevent corporations from intimidating whistleblowers through filing fake lawsuits?

Now here are seven tips on HOW you can help:

1) For my own case, I posted a list of people to contact. This same list can be used to help other whistleblowers in California, and I welcome suggestions about what I should add to it. Contact political representatives to make sure they quickly activate the appropriate whistleblower protection measures (and, more importantly, so they know that the public doesn't want them to villify the whistleblower: otherwise political representatives go with how the media is reporting it). Contact the media so they will know the readers are interested in exposing corporate shenanigans more than slamming the whistleblower.

2) If you have a web site or blog, it helps to blogroll and/or link to sources that offer the whistleblower's point of view. This is especially important if the mainstream media is already being dominated by corporate PR. For all the skepticism about the media in general, bloggers often rely on rehashing mainstream media content: that means they can easily end up as vehicles for corporate PR. A couple of weeks ago I caught a prominent blogger rehearsing falsehoods about Justen Deal. It took several comments to get her to consider where her assumptions had come from. This week she's on a panel of a blogger's conference, acting as an expert on blogger credibility and influence. But her sort of "credibility" is based on shunning independent blogs like mine in favor of citing mainstream media sources: i.e., her credibility is derived from the *reputation* of the mainstream media, not any gauge of the truth.

3) Of course if you're a blogger, it would really help if you blogged on the whistleblower's story. You might even be able to get an interview with the whistleblower. Do a podcast. See if you can get video.

4) If you don't own a blog, but you comment on them, you can help by offering a counterpoint every time you see a gross error in how a blogger has represented the whistleblower's situation or wherever you see comments obviously planted by corporate PR. I'm pretty good at tracking these, but I'm not omnipotent and I don't have the resources that corporate PR departments do. Justen at least has me - no one was there to help me with this when I was under Kaiser siege.

5) If you participate in social networking or social media sites where you can share blogs, news stories, and links, post the whistleblower's story. If there's video or podcast, post those on YouTube, etc. If the whistleblower has a podcast or video, add it to your public playlists. If you know of some forum frequented by people with the professional skills/resources to advocate for someone going up against a big corporation, point them to the whistleblower's story.

6) If you're a recruiter, HR representative, or hiring manager, you can take action to counter the public belief that whistleblowers will never be hired again. Corporations are only able to use that as a threat against whistleblowers because HR gurus have been harping on the dangers of digital dirt when they could be promising people that there's *nothing* corporate "issues managers" can do to destroy their chances for future employment. How about vowing not to Google prospective employees? How about making a public statement to the effect that you welcome job applications from people of integrity, including whistleblowers? At the very least, don't perpetuate the intimidation of whistleblowers through your own actions. Don't, for instance, decline hiring someone right after visiting their blog, lie about the reason, and then visit their blog several times a day every day thereafter (which not only emphasizes the role you've played in punishing whistleblowers, it shows you're a hypocrite since you actually love what they're doing).

7) Some people compulsively rip on whistleblowers without even reading their point of view. If the whistleblower has a blog or web site, please at least read what they have to say before tearing into them. Whistleblowers who have taken their concerns public are also often willing to answer questions, too. Try to avoid making assumptions based on whistleblower stereotypes: whistleblowers are individuals, with a variety of reasons for taking their problem public. Remember, a whistleblower who has gone public needs your help. Right now, the whistleblower experience is like crying "Rape" near a busy street - and then watching everyone cross the street away from you in order to gossip about your character and scalp tickets.

Many of the people who read this blog are filled with good will, and I hope at least some of you will be willing to convert that good will into action.

Kaiser PR Weenies Swarm!

2006-12-07T23:09:06Z

Over the past few weeks I've been wondering just how far Kaiser went in coordinating the response to FixKP.org. Now I have my answer: pretty damned far. The memo below is currently being distributed to a wide swathe of Kaiser employees:

Diane Gage-Lofgren/PO/KAIPERM

11/24/2006 04:38 PM

To Top 400 Execs-IREG
cc

Subject KP HealthConnect Q&A Document for Your Use

Dear Colleagues:

Over the past several weeks, the internal and external relations team has prepared a number of documents about KP HealthConnect for both internal and external audiences. I wanted to share the attached question and answer list with you to facilitate discussions you may be having with employees. It addresses the choice of Epic as our vendor, where we are in the implementation process and what challenges we have found along the way. Please let me know if you have needs for other communications.

Sincerely,

Diane

Diane Gage Lofgren
SVP, Brand Strategy, Communications & Public Relations
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.
One Kaiser Plaza, 26th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 267-2951 (Office)
(510) 267-2118 (Fax)

I'm still thinking about whether to post Kaiser's talking points memos. On the one hand people should know that Kaiser is scripting employee remarks about HealthConnect (including renewing their attack on Justen). On the other hand, I don't want to have any hand in spreading the Kaiser koolaid.

Note this memo was originally written for the "Top 400" execs over two weeks ago. All the official communications from Kaiser have been governed by this memo.

Update: HISTalk received this curious comment from someone at Kaiser:

In the early days we heard a lot about the personal relationship between Halvorson and the head of Epic; how he mentored her when she was a student at the University he served at and how he assisted when she was starting Epic.

Like HISTalk, I've never heard this claim made before. Unlike HISTalk, I think it would be a significant discovery which would demand a re-evaluation of all Halvorson's "business decisions" in regard to Epic.

Funny: Here's a Kaiser gripe that says a little something about the state of Kaiser's "information technology".