Kaiser Permanente

Advice Nurse Phone differs by department

Website

Davis Kaiser

Physician home pages

Kaiser Permanente is an HMO that provides complete diagnostic and medical treatment services for its members. It's a large medical organization with extensive services throughout Northern California. It's on Cowell Blvd, opposite Tanglewood Apartments and close to Wendy's, IHOP, and Applebee's.

Co-payment varies upon your plan. You can get there with the W line. Also, there is plenty of parking space available.

This Kaiser facility offers internal (adult) medicine, family medicine, and pediatrics. It includes a pharmacy and lab, as well as optometry services for members and non-members.

Kaiser Davis does not offer emergency or urgent care services. For this, you need to go to Sutter Hospital or a Kaiser facility in Sacramento. If you need to go a non-Kaiser ER for a life-threatening emergency, be sure to call Kaiser as soon as you can to arrange coverage of your care.

There are larger facilities in Sacramento and Roseville. These larger facilities offer the more extensive and complex services: cardiology, surgery, specialized care, and so forth. Your primary care physician will provide a referral if you are in need of these services.

To get an Urgent Care appointment, call the Kaiser advice nurse at your doctor's number. To go to the ER, just go.

Medical Professionals are limited by HIPAA as to what information they can make public about their patients, including who their patients are. As such it is very hard for Doctors, Dentists, and Psychiatrists to respond to negative comments on the wiki. Please keep this in mind while reading any comments.

Comments:

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• I grew up with Kaiser, and have always been happy with the services, of course I haven't experienced anything else... -aec

• I personally know someone who died because Kaiser doctors can only spend so much time with a patient and are heavily pressured not to use certain diagnostic tests that could cost Kaiser unneccesary money if the diagnosis is normal. I also know someone who went with a misdiagnosis of heartburn instead of Kaiser catching the slight heart attack he had really suffered, allowing him to have another before treatments began. Also, a friend of mine was in a coma for 8 days because of an infection that could have been prevented by Kaiser dentists (which is the same thing that happened to the guy I know that died - Kaiser missed the diagnosis of infection, letting it spread to his heart, lungs, and brain, eventually killing him). -LizaAbeja

• Ugh, guess I'm lucky my dental isn't through them. -aec

• Actually, you DO get your own personal physician, though there are other physicians to see if your own physician is not available. I've belonged to Kaiser since 1953 and it seems to be much improved compared to earlier years. Unlike other HMOs, these guys have been in the business long enough to have worked out a lot of the kinks. -BevSykes
  

• I liked Gould a lot more than Kaiser. They just kept botching things with me and don't seem to spend a lot of time before making a diagnosis. - RohiniJasavala

• It is really sad that this Kaiser offers no emergency services. I know a lot of students that come to UCD with Kaiser as their provider and are pissed off when they find out that the nearest "full function" hospital is in Sacramento. Kaiser should wise up and realize that they are not providing a service that is desperatly needed in this area in particular. The least they could do is not make students/people with their coverage jump through hoops to get bills settled from getting emergency services at Sutter Hospital. - ArlishaAdams

• Calling them drives me nuts. Five hours of menu navigation. I could beat Myst twice before I actually get to talk to someone. They tend not to like outside prescriptions either, so if you're a member and get a prescription from Cowell on campus, it can cause some problems. If it's a generic drug though, they might not argue. Otherwise, you'll probably need to get rechecked out at Kaiser, wasting a lot of time, unless you don't mind paying full price for the drugs. (It's easy to get a walk in at Cowell as a student, not so easy at Kaiser). -ES

• I had an appt. with Dr. Ho at Davis Kaiser, and he was very nice and accommodating. He also mentioned that he had been looking for restaurants on davis wiki on my return visit to pick up test results. - KenjiYamada
  

2006-08-22 13:04:49   Kaiser is great. But the one in Davis is rather small and doesn't offer all services. For some departments it's hard to make an appointment within the same week. I like this Davis Kaiser because it's usually not crowded. —AmyYang

2006-09-24 16:01:53   The website says they have urgent care. Anybody know for sure? —KatieQuinn

2006-09-24 16:49:43   Regardless of who your health care provider is, you must be your own advocate, and not stop until you are recieving as much care as you want. —RobiPochapin

• Or as little —Grumpyoldgeek

2007-01-05 00:36:40   They try to save money at all costs, so it's difficult (understatement) to get the care you need. Like tests, appointments with specialists, timely responses, etc. The phone system is beyond bureacratic, and should be hailed as a revolutionary way of ignoring patients. And no, last time I checked, there was no urgent care in Davis. You will have to go to Sacramento and hope you get to see someone who will prescribe you drugs without doing the tests to see you really need them, then get sucked into the system and be given oodles of drugs you still don't need for months and months and months before you convince them to do a test which rules out the need for all those drugs. —GreenThing

2007-01-26 09:15:42   I love my kaiser. As long as you are patient and don't get uppity, you get the health care you need. And also, many of the misdiagnoses I have read about sound less like negligence and more like the practical reality of medicine. Medicine is like any other field, mistakes are made, and as unpleasant as that is to accept, its the truth. —NicholasKnoblauch

2007-03-04 00:43:33   And yet, Kaiser has more horror stories than any other HMO or PPO. Let's take a simple example of Kaiser's reputation. Go to Google and type in the words "hate Kaiser" (using quotes). You get 1070 results. Now type "hate blueshield" or "hate healthnet". You get 5 each. If you were to search for "hate kaiser" without quotes you would get even more... 1,200,000 actually. Compared to the 67500 you would get for "hate healthnet" without quotes. I have heard many horror stories from many people, and most of them turned out to be through Kaiser. So it isn't a matter of not getting uppity. It isn't a matter of being patient. Kaiser is not just as good as any other HMO. It is a terrible system and no amount of "thriviness" ad campaigning will make it better. —GreenThing

2007-04-10 16:30:40   The amount of misinformation about Kaiser contained here is shocking. Shouldn't the contributors be people on Kaiser who can speak with authority rather than people who simply post rumors? I have been in Davis and on Kaiser for 11 years. The most telling statistics about the Davis Kaiser come from UC Davis. For the last few years the highest satisfaction ratings for medical insurance providers available through UC Davis have been for Kaiser. All Kaiser patients have a primary care physician—whoever wrote the information at the top of this page about "lack of personal physician is clearly NOT on the Kaiser insurance. If you want to go to whichever physician you want to a the drop of a hat and pay a huge amount of money for that privledge, Kaiser is not for you. If you want to be a part of the most functional health system currently available in the US, then Kaiser may be for you. Yes, they are a bit rigid at times but I have never been denied any service I have requested. Plus their docs will email with you. —RynRhodes

• If you're sure you are making a correction, go up and just edit the entry. That's the only way that the entry can be corrected. If you don't, who will?
  

2007-04-11 06:16:32   Dr. Drew Pinsky, of CNN, Loveline and Discovery Health fame, says that Kaiser's "pretty good, better than most". —JabberWokky

2007-05-29 18:23:01   Kaiser has no dentists as part of its medical group. Many members have dental insurance, but that insurance would be through Delta Dental and NOT through Kaiser. There are NO Kaiser dentists. —tokai-raider

2008-02-07 12:12:45   Interesting comments here. I've been very happy with Kaiser. Like any other field of medicine, it's not perfect. When I'm sick, (like today), I can call in and they will see me today, with my personal physician. If not available, I can see another one or even a nurse. That's probably what they mean by urgent care. So you can't walk-in, just call. Press 1, wait for the psychiatric emergency msg, then press 0. Talk to a person. If you sound serious enough, that's how they base their appointments. which is good. —mperkel

2008-04-08 18:29:16   I think that for people who have never had a really serious, or as Kaiser would call it, expensive health care problem it is easy for them to say what a fabulous plan that Kaiser is. Try having cancer or another serious ailment that isn't easy to diagnose or treat and then tell everyone how fabulous they are when they ignore the fact that your health declines day by day and tell you that you are fine and there is nothing wrong with you to save money on much needed tests. I think that before you question the validity of peoples claims about Kaiser treatment, or blame the patient for not being diagnosed properly you should consider the fact that people aren't complaining about getting diagnosed with a cold when they have the flu, people outraged because a company is choosing money over lives!! —Mandalynn

2008-08-22 20:19:50   I was married to a Kaiser physician. A couple points, a heath maintance organization is basically for healthy people. With minor heath complaints...Serious,chronic or rare disorders fall through the cracks and Kaiser loses money treating them, so, whay they do most often_{is never diagnose them. Always assume the lesser of probable diagnoses. Also, it's interesting that ALL Kaiser physicans go to other hospitals when they have a major health problem. But, I guess it's better than nothoing. In my opinion, push for a Dr. you trust, become informed about your condition and forget about being liked. You will be percieved as a pest if you rck the boat. —andrea12}

2008-08-22 20:37:10   I have to say that from personal experience (Liver Cancer as a child), Kaiser has been wonderful. I realize that with anything, this is a business, they're here to make $$$, but the service has always been good, better than most. But for cost comparison, Sutter has worked out well too. I used to have Kaiser as a child, and through different employers, and would switch back if I could afford it for the family. —Aaron.Curtin

2008-12-31 21:35:00   I went to the Sacramento Kaiser ER today and was surprised with excellent service, caring and knowledgable doctors, and a much more professional and well thought out experience than I have ever had before with Kaiser. Dr. Jay Thomas is the best and the nurses are awesome too. —tierramor

2009-04-15 14:00:00   Before I belonged to Kaiser, I had a breast tumor removed by a non-HMO doctor who scared me into unnecessary surgery, refused to give me any pain medication, then called me hysterical when I called the next day to complain about how much pain I was in and ask for a prescription. I also had a doctor ask me to remove my shirt and walk around his office bare chested when I was 12 and had gone in for what turned out to be mono. (Several years later I read in the paper that he lost his medical license for molesting female patients - no surprise there). So bad health care is not limited to HMOs by any means. I've belonged to Kaiser for 23 years and never had a major complaint with them. Several years ago I had a mysterious illness with symptoms of MS. They were never able to diagnose it, but not for lack of trying. I was given two brain scans, a neck scan, a CT scan, a spinal tap, and many assorted blood tests. The illness eventually disappeared on its own and was probably some sort of uncommon virus. But I never felt they were not taking my complaints seriously or avoiding giving me necessary tests. —NotSure

2009-07-09 01:46:09   Keep in mind that one of the reason that Kaiser gets socked with a large number of stories about them being problematic is because it actually is a single organization that manages hospitals. Blue Cross, Anthem, and many other insurance companies have little-to-no responsibility over the doctors you are seeing: they're just forking over the money. So when a doctor that you're seeing is negligent or otherwise problematic, it remains "that doctor"... but if you're at Kaiser (or to a lesser extent Sutter or Catholic) the problem becomes "that Kaiser doctor". I've not seen statistics on Kaiser docs being any better or worse at their jobs than others in general, but when it's possible to apply another label to them it makes it easy to find complaints in a general sense. (Full disclosure: I've had Kaiser since I was a child, and while I agree that their docs can be impersonal and brusque, I love the "one-stop-shopping" aspect of the Kaiser system. I spent a few years without it while doing the dot-com thing, and I couldn't stand having to find doctors accepting patients, nor having to deal with grocery store pharmacies.) —JasonLauborough