Posts Tagged ‘Commonwealth Club’

Garfield Biographer Speaks at the Commonwealth Club

posted on August 27, 2009
Photo by Joe Paolazzi

Photo by Joe Paolazzi

Dr. Sidney Garfield’s childhood dream of being an architect was shattered when his Jewish Russian immigrant parents insisted he become a doctor. Little did the young Garfield know that his destiny was not only to become a doctor but also to blaze trails few others had even dared to ponder.

Indeed, 25 years after Garfield’s death, President Barack Obama points to the medical care program Garfield founded as a model for 21st Century health care reform, author Tom Debley said in his talk to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco Aug. 25.

Debley, author of a new Garfield biography, described the extraordinary life of the pioneering Kaiser Permanente doctor in the book, Dr. Sidney R Garfield: the Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care.  “Most people know very little of Sidney Garfield, and I try to remedy this with my book (written in collaboration with Jon Stewart),” Debley told the crowd.

Debley recounted Garfield’s 20th Century journey from his birth in 1906 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the 1950s and 1960s battles to gain acceptance for a different type of medical care.

Garfield’s formula for the best health care emphasized ways to keep people free of disease and thus not needing sick care. In 1933, Garfield found he could provide affordable care to the workers on the Colorado River aqueduct project by collecting weekly dues to cover all members whether they required care or not.

“After nearly going broke, Garfield linked two ideas from the debate of his era – prepayment and prevention – in a way that reversed medical economics,” Debley, director of Heritage Resources for Kaiser Permanente,  told the Commonwealth Club audience.

“In 1938, he joined forces with (industrialist Henry J) Kaiser and his son Edgar at the construction site of the Grand Coulee Dam. Here Garfield added the ideas of group medical practice, facilities under one roof, and a family plan,” Debley said.

In the War years, Garfield reunited with the Kaisers to provide medical care for workers in Kaiser’s Pacific Coast shipyards and the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana, California. “In a mere 18 months, he and his colleagues opened four hospitals and built the largest civilian medical care program on the Home Front of World War II.”

When the War ended in 1945, Garfield and Kaiser were able to keep their health plan alive by opening up to the public and taking care of union members such as the longshoremen and the steel workers.  Soon enough, the University of California, public schools, other government and large employers picked up Kaiser Permanente care for their employees.

“Sidney Garfield was a doer – his is a classic American story – a man passionate about his calling and determined in his quest. Like his ideas or not, he and Henry Kaiser brought health care to millions of Americans – more than any two individuals I can think of in American history,” Debley told the group.

But, wait, the story isn’t over yet.  In the 1950s when Garfield’s run as medical director ended, he resurrected his youthful fantasy to be a builder. Garfield created designs for new Kaiser Permanente hospitals that won him national acclaim.

“Three hospitals opened in 1953 –in Walnut Creek, San Francisco, and Los Angeles – were labeled ‘dream hospitals.’ Dr. Walter C. Alvarez, perhaps America’s most famous physician of the era, told broadcaster Lowell Thomas:  ‘A new day has dawned, where more brains will go into the design and architecture of a hospital.’

“Newscaster Chet Huntley reported: “The use of labor-saving devices, the use of light (both natural and artificial), the gadgets, the décor, and the  personnel are all combined to make the new (Los Angeles) Kaiser Foundation Hospital something special,’ ”  Debley said.

Still, Garfield was not done.  In 1960, he insisted Kaiser Permanente embrace the computer whose development was in its infancy. “Garfield saw computers as a component of a ‘total health’ system of care,” Debley noted. Garfield’s early vision has allowed Kaiser Permanente to become an international leader in the field of electronic medical records and other IT systems.

All in a day’s work for Sidney Garfield.

 – Ginny McPartland

 

To order your copy of Debley’s book, Dr. Sidney R Garfield: the Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care, go to The Permanente Press.

To view the talk on FORA.tv, go to Commonwealth Club.

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Dr. Sidney Garfield: His Ideas at Center of Health Care Debate

posted on August 19, 2009

A recent PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer opened with this quote from President Barack Obama: “There are examples of how we can make the entire health care system more efficient. …What works? The Mayo Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic. Geisinger. Kaiser Permanente. There are health systems around the country that actually have costs that are as much as 20 percent or 30 percent lower than the national average and have higher quality. What is it that they are doing differently from other systems?”

Added correspondent Betty Ann Bowser: “What they are doing is providing excellent care at a low cost through an integrated system where doctors visits, tests, surgery, hospital care – the works – are all done under one roof.”

I will use this to lead off a talk at the Commonwealth Club of California on Tuesday (August 25) in San Francisco because there was little in the 10-minute report that said anything different from what Dr. Sidney R. Garfield, co-founder of Kaiser Permanente, said back in the 1930s – including his idea to put all needed care “under one roof.”

As author of The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care, the theme of my talk will be “The Long Quest for Health Care Reform: A Bay Area Doctor’s Belief in Health Care as a Right.” I will trace the story of Dr. Garfield’s life because so much less is known about him than his co-founder, Henry J. Kaiser.

The evening program begins with a 5:30 p.m. reception; program at 6 p.m. Tickets are $8 for members; $15 for nonmembers. Get tickets.

– Tom Debley

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President Obama Cites Kaiser Permanente Model; Learn More About Why Aug. 25

posted on July 29, 2009

Time Magazine reporter Karen Tumulty talked July 28 with President Barack Obama about health care reform, with a transcript published on the web July 29. Kaiser Permanente’s founding physician, Sidney R. Garfield, would have been proud if he were alive to hear the President say, “…If we could actually get our health-care system across the board to hit the efficiency levels of a Kaiser Permanente or a Cleveland Clinic or a Mayo or a Geisinger, we actually would have solved our problems.”

Dr. Garfield would have been proud because his vision on the Home Front of World War II was to build such a system for ordinary Americans. Indeed, it’s interesting, as well, to see Kaiser Permanente in the company of the Mayo Clinic. In 1943, the famed medical science writer Paul DeKruif wrote a book about what Dr. Garfield and Henry J. Kaiser were doing to develop a new model of medical care for working Americans, and nicknamed it the “Mayo Clinic for the common man.”

Interested in learning more about Dr. Garfield and his struggles to bring legitimacy to a revolutionary idea in health care? Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources Director Tom Debley, author of the newly released Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: the Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care, will speak on this subject at Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on Tuesday, Aug. 25.

Conversations about Dr. Garfield’s ideas will be nothing new for the Commonwealth Club. As a young man pioneering his prepaid, group practice, Garfield spoke to the club members on two occasions during the war.

Sidney Garfield presented a talk titled “The Permanente Foundation and Shipworkers’ Health” to the Public Health Section of the Commonwealth Club on May 6, 1943. He was engaged again to speak to the club members toward the end of the war (March 22, 1945). The title of his presentation was “A Workable Health Plan on the Basis of Permanente Experience.”

Debley’s talk is titled “The Long Quest for Health Care Reform: A Bay Area Doctor’s Belief in Health Care as a Right.” The evening begins with a 5:30 p.m. reception; program at 6 p.m. Tickets are $8 for members; $15 for nonmembers. For tickets, go to:
https://tickets.commonwealthclub.org/auto_choose_ga.asp?area=1&shcode=1359
- Ginny McPartland

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