Kaiser Permanente Receives Award for Excellence in Medication Safety

OAKLAND, Calif. — For the third year in a row, Kaiser Permanente will receive the Pharmacy Quality Alliance’s annual Quality Award, an honor that recognizes health plans achieving excellence in medication safety and quality.

Kaiser Permanente’s health plans in California are the winners this year, and they will receive the award at PQA’s annual meeting on May 29. In 2011, Kaiser Permanente health plans in Colorado and Hawaii were recipients; in 2012, Kaiser Permanente Northwest won the award.

“This honor recognizes our consistent dedication to safety and quality,” said David Kvancz, vice president, national pharmacy programs and services for Kaiser Permanente. “Our coordinated care delivery model allows all members of the care team to access patients’ medical records, offering multiple opportunities to review medications for safety and effectiveness.”

The PQA Quality Award recognizes health plans, Pharmacy Benefit Management plans and others that offer Medicare Part D prescription benefits and are high performers in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Medicare Star Quality Rating Program. To qualify for the PQA’s Quality Award, a health plan must:

-Achieve a 5-star rating on all PQA measures in the Part D star ratings
-Achieve at least 4 stars on the Part D summary rating

For the 2013 plan year, Kaiser Permanente’s health plans in California achieved a 5-star overall summary rating (the highest rating from CMS) on Part D. The California health plans also received an overall rating of 5 stars for Part C for 2013.
The 2013 PQA Quality Award follows several other recent honors received by Kaiser Permanente:

-Kaiser Permanente’s Medicare plans in California received a 5-star rating for 2013, the only health plan in the state to get the top rating and one of only 11 plans in the nation to get a 5-star rating from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It was the second straight year Kaiser Permanente in California has received 5 stars.

-Seventeen Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California and Southern California were named “Top Hospitals” in 2012 by The Leapfrog Group. Only 93 hospitals in the nation — of more than 1,200 surveyed — received this honor.

-Nearly all Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California received “A” grades in The Leapfrog Group’s 2012 Hospital Safety Scores.

-Ten Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California were ranked as Top Performers in 2012 by The Joint Commission.


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 more than 9 million members in nine 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/newscenter.