The Permanente Medical Groups embrace the principles of Permanente Medicine: an ethics- and values-based system of organizing and delivering high-quality, evidence-based health care at affordable prices. Permanente Medicine is at the heart of the unique professional culture and identity that defines and inspires the Permanente community of more than 11,000 physicians, and safeguards the patient-physician relationship.

For members, Permanente Medicine means that high-quality, evidence-based medicine is our primary focus, and that medical decisions are made by physicians. It also means that members have convenient access to specialists, with physicians working in multispecialty teams to coordinate care in the interests of quality and efficiency.

Permanente Medicine is rooted in the following structural principles:

Group Responsibility
Self-Governance
Self-Management

Added to these structural principles are three performance principles that underlie our organization: high-quality medical care, a Permanente-patient relationship, and sound management of Kaiser Permanente resources.

Group Responsibility
Each Permanente physician has a professional responsibility to each patient, one at a time. That responsibility is in keeping with the Hippocratic tradition. Permanente Medical Group physicians add another element to that requirement: accountability to an entire population for quality of care, service, and appropriate use of the resources.

Self-Governance
Permanente physicians manage this dual responsibility – to the individual members and to the broader population of members – through self-governance, which means that internal Medical Group affairs are conducted through a democratic process of representative, elected group leadership and decision-making.

Self-Management
The self-governance process allows Permanente physicians to self-manage resources necessary for the delivery of quality health care. Unlike many HMO competitors, when any Permanente physician decides how to treat a patient, that physician makes that decision without being required to go through a Health Plan approval process. This independence preserves professionalism and is a hallmark of Permanente Medicine.