Kaiser Permanente Wins Six Awards for Digital Excellence

OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Kaiser Permanente has received six prestigious awards recognizing its use of digital tools to engage consumers in managing their health care and to enable employees to deliver high quality care.

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The health care organization won five 2013 eHealthcare Leadership awards, including the highest honor for Organizational Commitment, and the 2013 Hospital Website Transparency Award with Distinction, selected by the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission and The Leapfrog Group.

Kaiser Permanente was one of only five health care organizations recognized for eHealthcare Leadership Organizational Commitment and the only health care organization recognized in its category. The top award distinguishes Kaiser Permanente for its commitment to using online and mobile technologies to support its mission of total health through consumer and employee engagement.

"Technology is in our DNA," said Wendy Lee, senior vice president for Digital Health Technology and Strategic Initiatives at Kaiser Permanente. "Harnessing it for care providers is just one part of providing patient-centered care. Empowering our members to manage their health care anytime, anywhere completes the health care ecosystem."

The 2013 Hospital Website Transparency Award with Distinction identified Kaiser Permanente's Quality website as an outstanding tool to promote transparency of quality measures in a manner that is useful and user-friendly for consumers.  

"We realized early on that digital engagement was an important piece of our integrated care model," said Christine Paige, senior vice president for Marketing and Internet Services at Kaiser Permanente. "Whether by providing convenient tools that make it easy for members to manage their health care or by providing prospective members with user-friendly websites that help them make their health care choices, technology puts consumers at the center of their health care."

Kaiser Permanente's personal health record, My Health Manager on kp.org, won a Platinum eHealthcare Leadership award for Best Patient Access and Convenience. Linked to Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect®, the organization's comprehensive electronic health record system, My Health Manager connects members to their health care providers and their health information. More than 4.4 million members are registered to use My Health Manager, which enables members to access their health records, view lab test results, email their physicians, order prescriptions and make, change and cancel appointments for themselves or for family members.

"Members want more value from their health care than ever before," said Paige. "Our digital tools make it easier for them to maximize their investment by connecting them to every aspect of their care, which ultimately leads to better health."

So far this year members have used My Health Manager to:

• View more than 26 million test results
• Send more than 11 million emails to their care providers
• Refill more than 10.8 million prescriptions
• Schedule more than 2.8 million appointments

In addition to these top awards, Kaiser Permanente was recognized by eHealthcare Leadership for:

Best Mobile Communications (KP App) – Gold Award
The KP App empowers Kaiser Permanente members with easy and convenient tools and information to manage their health care anywhere in the world. Members can view medical records, make appointments, refill prescriptions, view lab test results, send messages to their care providers and more. The app is available free of charge on the Apple App Store and Google Play, and has been downloaded more than 780,000 times.

Best Intranet (Baldwin Park Inpatient Quality Management Model) – Gold Award
The award recognizes Kaiser Permanente's online toolkit developed to support implementation of the Inpatient Quality Management Model throughout Kaiser Permanente. The patient-centered IQM model developed at the Southern California Baldwin Park Medical Center provides a blueprint for a systems approach to inpatient care rooted in the principles of quality appropriateness, timeliness, consistency, communication, real-time peer review and concurrent review. Design firm A Hundred Years developed the website.

Best Site Design (medicare.kp.org) – Gold Award
The website provides Medicare beneficiaries with easy access to information about the four parts of Medicare (Parts A, B, C and D). It outlines eligibility requirements, and clearly illustrates cost and coverage options. Eligible customers can enroll in Kaiser Permanente's Medicare plan directly from the website. In 2012, the website recorded nearly 2 million visits, a 100 percent increase over the previous year.

Winners of the 2013 eHealthcare Leadership Awards were selected from more than 1,100 entries. Judges looked at how websites and other digital communications compared with others in their organization's classification. They also reviewed entries based on a proprietary multi-point standard of Internet excellence. The best overall Internet site category, for example, had to pass muster on more than 40 factors.

About Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, our mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 9.1 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to kp.org/share.

CONTACT:
Amanda Wardell
[email protected]
(510) 625-3954

Ravi Poorsina
[email protected]
(510) 625-5593

SOURCE Kaiser Permanente