Kaiser Permanente

For 13 years, registered nurse Kim Mullen has been part of a successful experiment: a collaborative partnership between the health care professionals at Kaiser Permanente and the executives who run the massive nonprofit. Decisions about the day to day delivery of care were shared among physicians, managers and employees. Workers’ input was actively and continuously solicited. Staffing ratios, wages and benefits, patient care — all were subject to group-based discussion and problem solving. “It’s a model that puts patients first,” says Mullen, who works at Kaiser’s South Bay Medical Center in the Harbor City area of Los Angeles. “We have always led in partnership. I now help teach that model of partnership. And we’ve known what the vision was — like a compass, with our patients’ care right in the middle.