Kaiser Permanente
Division of Research Spotlight
The Kaiser Permanente Division of Research conducts, publishes, and disseminates epidemiologic and health services research to improve the health and medical care of Kaiser Permanente members and society at large. We seek to understand the determinants of illness and well-being, and to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care. Currently, DOR’s 550-plus staff is working on more than 350 epidemiological and health services research projects.
A sophisticated system that analyzes electronic data about hospital patients, identifies those at risk of deteriorating, and issues an alert to a centralized team of specially trained nurses resulted in a lower mortality rate, Kaiser Permanente researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Kaiser Permanente study finds new classification and automated referral system benefits patients.
A new Kaiser Permanente research paper explains how Kaiser Permanente Northern California quickly ramped up its existing telehealth oncology program at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kaiser Permanente's Northern California hospitals reduced hospitalizations and readmissions even as patients' conditions increased in severity, a new analysis shows.
The new KP Research Radio podcast looks at how the expansion of at-home dialysis in Kaiser Permanente's Northern California region is improving the quality of life of patients with end-stage kidney disease.
Despite a broad campaign among physician groups to reduce the amount of imaging in medicine, the rates of use of CT, MRI and other scans have continued to increase in both the United States and Ontario, Canada, according to a new study of more than 135 million imaging exams.
A study in Annals of Surgical Oncology finds that the rate of home recovery after mastectomy increased from 23% regionwide to 61% in the 6 months after the program started, with no significant changes in emergency-department visits, reoperations, or readmissions.
A large, multicenter study of advanced medical imaging in pregnancy, published in JAMA Network Open and co-led by Marilyn Kwan, PhD, found that CT scans were performed in 0.8% of pregnancies in the United States and 0.4% in Ontario in 2016; these rates increased nearly fourfold in the United States and doubled in Ontario over the 21 years.
A new machine learning algorithm developed by Kaiser Permanente researchers reveals the complexity of sepsis by sorting patients into recognizable treatment subgroups.
Erring on the side of caution, emergency physicians tend to order CT scans to evaluate appendicitis in children, “but research shows that we weren’t necessarily catching more appendicitis,” Dr. Cotton said. “CT scans are costly and expose children to ionizing radiation that can increase the risk of cancer. At the same time, emergency physicians do not want to miss an important diagnosis like appendicitis.”
