Kaiser Permanente is a pioneer in coordinated health care and coverage in Georgia. As the state’s largest nonprofit health plan, our integrated health care model serves members in 32 counties in metropolitan Atlanta and Athens.

Care for our members is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists, and team of other health care providers. In fact, physicians and more than 200 nonphysician staff members make up The Southeast Permanente Medical Group, Inc. and are dedicated to making the lives of our members and communities healthier.

We believe it is important to provide our perspective on policy debates and engage the public in these critical health and health care issues.

Issues

COVID-19 response

As Kaiser Permanente continues to safely provide testing, treatment, and vaccinations for COVID-19 in Georgia, we are also focused on statewide efforts to preserve care and coverage during these challenging times.

Pharmacy benefit manager regulations

Kaiser Permanente is not a PBM, or pharmacy benefit manager, and we firmly oppose regulations to the prescription drug supply chain in Georgia without consideration of our integrated model of care.

While the current proposals intend to address issues that can occur between separate actors across the prescription drug supply chain, the latest PBM regulations would unintentionally undermine our integrated model of care — forcing costly restructuring of our pharmacy practices and ultimately increasing costs for our members without producing any benefits for them.

As a health plan, provider, and pharmacy in one, Kaiser Permanente has a unique approach to pharmacy benefits and operations.

• We only provide services to affiliated parties. Kaiser Permanente does not provide any pharmacy-related services to any unaffiliated party outside of our integrated organization.
• Our integrated structure creates incentives to use drug discounts to keep costs down.
• We do not submit drug reimbursement claims to ourselves. Kaiser Permanente pharmacies do not submit drug reimbursement claims to our own health plans, since both are part of the same integrated entity. 

Our impact in Georgia

Kaiser Permanente seeks to increase access to health care, especially for people in under-resourced communities. The programs we support increase safety net organizations’ ability to provide care, strengthen communities, and reduce health disparities related to care access. Learn more about our ongoing programs and investments to improve health outcomes.

Our care and our people

Care that sets the bar. Kaiser Permanente has number 1 ratings in 42 care measures ranked by the National Committee for Quality Assurance — the most of any health plan in the country.

Care and equity. Kaiser Permanente was among the first to receive the Health Equity Award from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Effectiveness of care measures. Kaiser Permanente leads Georgia with number one rankings in breast cancer screening, colorectal cancer screening, controlling blood pressure, and well-child visits.

Leading health care. The Southeast Permanente Medical Group is one of the largest multi-specialty medical groups in Georgia. Our highly skilled and caring medical teams are supported by industry-leading technology and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the art care delivery, and world-class chronic disease management