Has it come to this?
By admin • May 6th, 2007 • Category: HealthConnect, Kaiser Permanente, business
Kaiser Permanente reported its first quarter financial results late Friday. You’d be hard-pressed to find any actual coverage of the results, but if any newspaper cared enough to cover the financial health of the largest not-for-profit healthcare provider in the country, it would go something like…
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, the largest not-for-profit healthcare provider in the country, on Friday reported first quarter financial results that showed revenue surging 9% to $9.4 billion from $8.6 billion one year ago, as membership growth plummeted over 60%. Profit, on a net income basis, came in at $698 million, compared to $448 million in the year-ago quarter, largely the result of the organization cutting $130 million from spending on medical equipment, hospitals and facilities, and other capital investments. HealthConnect, the controversial computer project to try to digitize patient records being pushed by Kaiser’s CEO, continued to consume a large portion of the healthcare provider’s resources, as critics say the unreliable project is both a threat to patient safety and a drain on the organization’s resources.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the organization chose not to publicly report, at all, operating income or operating margin. My post last week pointed out that Kaiser Permanente’s growing reluctance to report results on an operating basis make discerning the organization’s true financial health difficult.
I suppose that’s the point.
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Justen,
This is now an international cause as the inferior and ineffective health IT from the USA is exported around the globe. You and your readers should please check out: e-health-insider.com/news/item.cfm?ID=2592 or google on ehealth Milton Keynes to read of the health IT debacle across the pond in England. The supplier of the Cerner Millenium, Fujitsu, states….there have been some high impact problems and we regret any inconvenience that this has caused to patients and clinicians.” How sweet of them to be so concerned for patients after implementing a sytem of computer devices that can result in death. Where was their due diligence on safety and efficacy?
Justen, we are with you…do not stop. Things are happening.
best regards,
menoalittle
[...] On Friday, the non-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan reported that its profit for the first half of the year was over $1.9 billion. For the first time in years, the organization also reported its figures on an operating income basis, a more helpful measure of ongoing performance, rather than net income (which happens to be an issue I had raised again and again). [...]