Update 11/7/06: The full text of Justen Deal’s email to all Kaiser employees has been archived here.
According to a new web site, www.fixkp.org, that was recently created by Justen Deal, a Kaiser manager:
Kaiser Permanente could face losses of as much as $7 billion dollars over the next two years. These losses would be a huge challenge for the organization, and much of it can be prevented! In fact, at least $1.5 billion dollars is being wasted on unreliable, inefficient software.
It’s time Kaiser Permanente’s Board of Directors corrected our course.
Way to go Justen! It’s about time someone from within the organization made a serious attempt to galvanize employees to demand accountability from the powers that be. Maybe now Kaiser’s board of directors will finally feel encouraged to address the very real problems that need repairing, rather than continuing to pour piles of member money into deliberately misleading image campaigns. We just hope Mr. Deal is prepared for the inevitable retaliation and character smears that are about to come his way.
Read all about it here.
Updates from CorpHQ:
Update 2: Someone just asked me how Halvorson’s claim of the upcoming $7 billion in losses jives with Kaiser’s 2005 end-of-year $500,000,000 payout to the doctors. And is that all the doctors (re: pension plans), all the doctors who got bonuses, or just the “shareholders”? Any takers?
Update 3: Justen has pointed out that Kaiser employees are being subjected to propaganda about the success of Kaiser’s budget-sucking EMR, while in truth the system is faltering: Epic outages have increased from just over 9,000 user hours per month in June to over 59,000 last month. If anyone wants to see what these outages being dealt with in situ, here’s an extract from a Kaiser critical incident whiteboard…
Update, a comment from a Kaiser employee: “As an employee at the only Northern California Kaiser that has gone live in the inpatient setting. The HealthConnect outages now called “code white” are dangerous to patient care. The Key is that THERE IS NO BACKUP. When the system is down, RNs cannot lookup key information like vitals, lab work, medication orders. THERE IS NOTHING ON PAPER. We may not know what Mrs. Jones last blood pressure was, or when or what her next medication is due. This is scary!!!”
So, coincidentally (or NOT) Kaiser Permanente Chief Information Officer Cliff Dodd resigns, while at the same time Justen Deal’s concerns are dismissed. Makes you go hmm…
Read George Halvorson’s response to Justen’s email here.
Previously:
HealthConnect: Kaiser Swindling Congress — HealthConnect is Kaiser Permanente’s multi-billion dollar, supposedly new and state of the art electronic medical records system, which according to this article by a former Kaiser IT employee is none of the things Kaiser has claimed it is (except for the multi-billion dollar part). Full Story
Kaiser Thrive Exposed would like to personally thank Dr. Geoff Galbraith - Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute board member; and Vice President, Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, Quality Improvement Management - for inspiring us to create this website. Did we make it into the top 5?
Yeah, I have a feeling Justen is about to realize the hard way what I’ve been saying all along about Kaiser’s willingness to lie and destroy evidence to get out of a tight spot. Maybe he thinks having the initiative on the press coverage will protect him. Hope he’s right about that, and I do wish him luck.
It’s difficult for people outside of Kaiser’s organization to get hard proof even for issues that are common knowledge. The only way to change Kaiser is for people of conscience within the organization to get the word out.
Of course people within the organization are afraid to speak out, because it would most likely mean losing their job, and possibly jeopardize future employment prospects as well.
What Justen Deal is doing is very brave, but I’ll be surprised if Kaiser doesn’t find some way to get rid of him for this.
If you read all the letters that Justen has posted on his site and then read the responses from the various Kaiser entities (supposed Chief Compliance Officer, attorneys, etc.) you will find already that they avoid the core issues in his complaints and pick the ones they can explain away. This typifies Kaiser from top to bottom. Deny, deny, deny, deny…
Oh and say over and over again that your process is ‘independent’. BS… There is nothing independent about hired lawyers ‘researching’ complaints, nor hired ‘compliance officers’ researching complaints. I suggested to Justen in an email that he skip all of that and take it to the media. Right now it looks like he’s getting a pat on the head and being told ‘there there.. be a good little boy and run along, nothing inappropriate is going on.’
I wonder why the State of California hasn’t taken more of an interest in this, considering CalPERS is such a huge part of Kaiser’s business in the state. If what Justen say’s is true regarding projected losses I’m sure CalPERS would like to know where their money is going, and so would the State Insurance board.
I have a letter Justen sent around internally to Kaiser if you’d like to see it, along with some other stuff…
The purpose of the lawyers and compliance people is to protect KP from legal problems, and they will lie, cheat, steal and run over anyone in their way to do it. They are a bigger problem than senior management.
It looks like Justen sent at least one letter to the Department of Managed Health Care, which basically gives Kaiser a free ride on all wrongdoing unless it becomes a media event. Hopefully the media will get involved with this one. It has the potential to be a very big scandal given the way Kaiser has misrepresented HealthConnect to everyone including the federal government.
I also sent you a private email.
Justen Deal was not a Manager at Kaiser. Keywords Was not.
An article on ITWorld.com (unrelated to the scandal) identifies Justen Deal as a manager. Someone else told me he was a “project manager,” so probably not actual management. Kaiser downplays that as “project supervisor” in a couple of the news articles today.
Who knows what the truth is? Kaiser is scrambling so fast to cover its tracks that history will be completely rewritten again before I’m done typing this comment.
Enoch Choi actually promoted Justen to Epic Project Manager - and he shut down comments so no one could tell him any differently, lol.
Link
I’m so glad to have someone as strong as Justen stand up for all of KP. I don’t believe Cliff’s resignation is coincidence (which incidently, is the latest spin Kaiser is trying to pull). You don’t just “lose” 70 something million dollars & not expect repercussions. This is when the CFO was fired a few years back. Why wasn’t Dodd let go then. Hmmm…anyone interested in launching a financial audit for KP ?????
Nobody believes Dodd’s resignation was coincidence, contrary to head “issues management” weenie Matthew Schiffgens’ claims that “The timing is not fortuitous.” Please, Mr. Schiffgens, stop insulting our intelligence this way…your eyes are turning brown!
I 2nd the call for a full investigation & financial audit of KP.
Justen Deal is STILL an employee of Kaiser Permanente - on PAID administrative leave. Dodd - john, clifford or otherwise is not.
George Halvorson is exchanging emails with Mr. Deal which means that Mr. Deal is not some crackpot.
How many people have to be forced into retirement or job eliminated before the government finally sees another ENRON situation and does something about it. Let’s ask the Hawaii people how they feel. Better yet - How about the entire outsourced IT department. CAN you say “EPIC support - let me put you on hold while I answer 4,000 other calls, thank you!”
That is our understanding too, that Justen is still on paid administrative leave. The comment by AdminL above isn’t ours…I’m not sure why that person chose a name to comment with that is so close to mine, but hopefully it wasn’t an attempt to mislead anyone.
We believe every word that Justen wrote in that email. We have been hearing complaints about Epic and HealthConnect and the waste for 3 years. What we don’t believe is that Dodd’s resignation is not related.
Very interesting to hear Halvorson is corresponding with Justen after Kaiser has made every effort to represent him in the media and in internal memos as one misguided individual. We find the internal stuff especially interesting because the employees they are trying to convince are very aware of the problems with the system that Justen pointed out. It’s like the powers that be are trying to brainwash people into disbelieving what they know is true. Kaiser reminds me of the Church of Scientology in the way it operates.
[...] This latest article looks a lot like Kaiser/Epic PR disguised as news, and we find it extremely interesting that Justen Deal was not asked to participate. Another one of those moments that make you go hmm… [...]
launching a financial audit for KP ?????
Wonderful idea!…
I 3rd the call for a full investigation & financial audit of KP.(But not by another internal-bogus-investigation by Kaiser please. How about the Federal Government.)
Aloha, PR expendatures don’t always create the goal when rules of the coverage are changed and the members suffer seemingly high cost over-rides. Our recent high end plan left a surprize $16000 bill representing 20% of the cost. The whole idea of medical insurance was to stop the after shocks of injury. $6000+ was 3 pt blood and processing. Howabout, some back credit for past and future blood donation? I only fell out of a tree and now I’m selling the farm before I’m up the creek w/o a paddle. Hey! I love you all for the help I received, but the playing field is off level. I hear there’s a new plan when was it offered? Justen seems too busy to help me thru the web site I’ll be wading through, Aloha, hgm that’s a valid email site hgmarx@gmail.com now i see what justen is talking about
[...] [kaiserthrive.org editor’s note: The following was sent to us by a Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect employee, who reported these procedural and ethics violations to Compliance, but as usual nothing was done (a la Justen Deal). The Compliance Hotline is a well known internal joke to Kaiser employees. When a problem is reported, the information provided in the report is used in the investigative process to cover up whatever the issue was that you complained about, rather than to address the problem. The result is always the same: an investigation that finds no violations. Interestingly, we have received several complaints about one of the worst offenders mentioned below — Implementation Lead, Vijaya Rogers — who was personally involved in a huge financial corruption scandal while employed at a non-profit, prior to obtaining her position at Kaiser. It is often asked where Kaiser finds all of these corrupt managers, and now we know.] [...]
Does your Vagina Hurt!!
[Posted by a Kaiser employee; Work IP: 162.119.64.112; Home IP: 67.160.219.43; email: billthompson@yahoo.com]
Who is this i*iot?
He obviously hasn’t caught on yet about Kaiser.
I wonder if he uses Kaiser for his healthcare.
Let’s hope he is healthy!
[...] Page one of today’s Wall Street Journal has an article on the email I sent on November 3, along with a look at the events leading up to and following it. [...]