Modern Healthcare Names Southern California Permanente Medical Group's Khang Nguyen, MD, to its 2026 Innovators Awards List

Dr. Nguyen, Chief Medical Officer for Care Navigation, The Permanente Federation, Recognized for Advancing Technology Tools to Enhance Care Access and Simplify Communication

OAKLAND, Calif., April 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Khang Nguyen, MD, medical director for Care Transformation, Southern California Permanente Medical Group, and chief medical officer for Care Navigation, The Permanente Federation, was named by Modern Healthcare to its 2026 Innovators Awards list.

The award honors 30 healthcare leaders and organizations driving innovation that improves care, achieves measurable results, and contributes to clinical and financial goals. Dr. Nguyen was recognized for leading development of technology tools to facilitate care access, simplify communication, and effectively optimize member experience and care outcomes.

"This recognition pays tribute to our value-based, physician-led, prepaid model that supports innovation and the integration of technology to enhance the patient experience, and drive high-quality care and outcomes," Dr. Nguyen said. "It also honors Permanente physicians and care teams for continuously working to better meet the changing needs and expectations of our members and patients."

Modern Healthcare selected Dr. Nguyen for his leadership role in four technology initiatives:

• Kaiser Permanente Intelligent Navigator (KPIN), a tool that allows patients to describe their care needs in their own words, not via preset menus. KPIN then recommends the most clinically appropriate action, watches for high-acuity symptoms and, if needed, advises seeking immediate attention through a nurse triage line for evaluation. Findings in a 2025 Nature article showed the KPIN platform detected urgent medical cases with 97.7% accuracy and increased patient satisfaction by 8.6%. More than half of patients who used KPIN made timely and appropriate appointments. In comparison, across the entire health care industry, only 3 out of 10 patients who attempt to book appointments online are successful. The abandonment rate was just 3% with KPIN, compared to the e-commerce average of up to 70%.
• Smart Messaging Tool (SMT) uses natural language processing to categorize messages by clinical and operational topics, helping clinicians effectively manage their inboxes and enabling faster review of high-acuity messages. A study on SMT published in JAMA Network Open in 2025 examined the processing of 3 million messages from 1 million unique patients. The study demonstrated that SMT achieved a classification accuracy of 81%, significantly higher than the legacy system's 44%. SMT was also associated with a 17-hour reduction in the duration of time between when high-acuity messages were sent and their initial review by a clinician.
• Get Care Now, a 24/7 virtual urgent care service, allows Kaiser Permanente patients in Southern California to connect with clinicians in under 2 hours via phone or video visits, achieving an industry-leading Net Promoter Score of 87 for patient experience, according to an NPJ | digital medicine article. It enables patients to receive care at more appropriate, integrated care settings instead of visiting an emergency room.
• Ambient AI listening technology captures and transcribes conversations between patients and physicians — with permission — in the exam room. The physician then reviews the transcribed clinical notes for accuracy. Dr. Nguyen played a key role in deploying this tool to more than 8,000 physicians in Southern California. This effort was part of a national rollout to help clinicians focus on patients while technology assists with documentation, a key source of physician burnout.

The complete list of Modern Healthcare honorees and their profiles are available at Innovators Awards 2026 - Modern Healthcare

To learn more about Permanente Medicine, visit https://permanente.org/.

About Permanente Medical Groups
Permanente Medical Groups provide award-winning care to Kaiser Permanente's 12.6 million members. More than 25,000 primary care physicians and specialists are dedicated to the mission of providing high-quality, affordable care to all our patients and communities. Our ethical, compassionate approach to value-based care is physician-led, patient-centered, and evidence-based. We work collaboratively, supported by state-of-the art facilities and technology, to provide world-class primary, complex, and chronic care in eight states — from Hawaii to Maryland — and the District of Columbia. 

About The Permanente Federation
The Permanente Federation is the national leadership and consulting organization of Permanente Medical Groups, which provide high-quality, affordable health care to the members of Kaiser Permanente. The Federation works to spread the ethical and compassionate value-based care we call Permanente Medicine. Our model of care is physician-led, patient-centered, and team-delivered. We foster and accelerate medical research, clinical innovation, and performance improvements. With Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, we are expanding the reach of Kaiser Permanente's unique approach to integrated care delivery, transforming health care in America. 

SOURCE The Permanente Federation