In 2003, when Christine Cassel joined the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Board of Directors, she was also selected to chair the Board’s Quality and Health Improvement Committee. Since she took over, there has been a continuous stream of serious lapses in the quality of clinical care at Kaiser Permanente. Despite significant concerns raised in the media regarding the seriously declining quality of care delivered to Kaiser Permanente members, Dr. Cassel has not publicly announced any sort of investigation into the issues, she has not released any report or plan for improvement, and she has yet to even issue a single public statement regarding any of the reported breakdowns in clinical care.
Earlier this year, we found out that Kaiser Permanente board members are making, on average, at least $124,000 for about 40 hours per year of work. Perhaps Dr. Cassel feels she just doesn’t get paid enough to bother dealing with the concerns of the nearly nine million Kaiser Permanente members she is supposed to be representing?
Dr. Cassel failed to hold Cliff Dodd accountable for questions regarding financial transactions with an outside company which he was also directing. Dr. Cassel failed to hold George Halvorson accountable for issues surrounding his fleecing of a not-for-profit healthcare organization in Minnesota. Dr. Cassel failed on each of these counts. At least she could do something about clinical quality, the one area for which she should care about, the one area which for she is undeniably responsible.
It’s time Dr. Cassel lived up to the responsibilities of her position, instead of just collecting her pay check and leaving Kaiser Permanente members holding the bag. Please consider emailing Dr. Cassel at ccassel@abim.org, or you can call her office directly at 215 446-3528.
on Oct 23rd, 2007 at 15:22
I googled for her, and I found out she’s the president of the Board of Internal Medicine. How could a person like that stay on the Kaiser board and not do anything about it??