Dive Brief:
- Kaiser Permanente, which operates in eight states and serves more than 10 million members in an integrated health plan, has announced plans to open its own medical school in Southern California, the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, in 2019.
- The health system is looking to incorporate its integrated model for healthcare delivery into its training, saying current physician education hasn't kept pace with complex care-delivery systems.
- The system is taking an unusual approach compared to other health systems that partner with a university, such as North Shore-LIJ in New York and Beaumont Health in suburban Detroit, Modern Healthcare notes.
Dive Insight:
The concept has been long in coming at Kaiser, which has been developing the plans for five years and already operates a School of Allied Health Sciences.
The move will be intended to pay back for the system, John Lutz of consulting firm Huron Healthcare told Modern Healthcare. Training and ultimately retaining physicians to work specifically within Kaiser's care delivery model could help the system improve its population health metrics and efficiencies as well as keep costs contained.
Kaiser also made news this week with its announcement of urgent care video visits, allowing patients to obtain care without the difficulty of making it into a clinic or exposing themselves to other ill patients. Members can schedule the visits online and have no-pay.