Purpose, Partnership, and The Permanente Federation's Tenth Anniversary

By Jay Crosson, MD

Summer 2007 - Volume 11 Number 3

Sidney Garfield, MD, the physician cofounder of Kaiser Permanente (KP) and father of Permanente Medicine, is often hailed as a great visionary and innovator in American medicine. He was the man who joined prepayment to multispecialty group practice and articulated the principles of a new and revolutionary model of health care financing and delivery. But as revealed in his remarks to a group of Permanente physicians (see: Advice to Permanente Physicians from Dr Sidney Garfield, page 60), Dr Garfield's genius was not limited to grand-scale ideas. He also understood a great deal about the everyday, real-world workings of organizations, partnerships, and power--lessons that are as relevant today as they were 33 years ago and lessons that strongly informed the creation of The Permanente Federation, which observes its tenth anniversary this year.