Today I received Kaiser Permanente healthcare service for the first time. I have NEVER experienced the fabulous quality of healthcare service in my life that I experienced today. Not even close. 

I’ve had back pain for over two weeks after moving a bunch of stuff, which is definitely out of the ordinary for me. I figured I should go to a doctor to make sure I didn’t have a herniated disc or something serious (I don’t).

This morning I set up my on-line account to make an electronic reservation but it gave me a month out so I phoned, sure that I could get in sooner. That is when Kaiser’s superior service level started. A gal named Carol got me an appointment only four hours from the time I called. However, not only was she VERY polite, she was also very empathetic, even saying she was sorry my first encounter with Kaiser had to be due to back pain. I was impressed, but figured I’d just happened to hit on an unusually nice person. Fortunately that was just the beginning.

Imagine my pleasant surprise when every person I encountered gave me the same polite, cheerful, and helpful service. From the registration personnel to the people giving me directions to the next department I needed to go to.

The second amazing thing was my typical wait time was only a few minutes. I went to three departments and the longest wait was about five minutes. I showed up 45 minutes early to my appointment and thus figured I’d have a VERY long wait until I saw the Doctor, but I was taken right away when I got there and whisked through everything I encountered. The Dr decided I should go see a couple other departments, one of them being Radiology to get an EKG (unrelated to the back pain…!).

Kaiser is absolutely huge compared to the couple dozen facilities where I was before. You’d think they’d have more problems with teaching people good attitude and quickly moving through each stop. Even the signage and layout is far superior to anything I’ve encountered before.

On top of that, every department knew I was coming when I arrived, I didn’t have to give the same information more than once anywhere and I didn’t have to fill out a long form about my medical history even though this was my first visit. The Dr just asked a few questions and quickly keyed basic information into the Electronic Medical Record.

This experience of no-wait time, never giving the same info more than once and rapid movement through a system is considered by many healthcare companies an impossible-to-achieve holy grail.

I am beyond impressed. Blown away. My hat is off to Dr. Desai and all of the staff at the Vallejo, CA facility. You ALL are amazing. Most of all, there are people somewhere, behind the scenes from a patient point of view, that have figured out how to produce the positive patient experience I had today. Congrats to them.