Steven R. Zatkin
General Counsel
Kaiser Permanente is America’s leading nonprofit integrated health care finance and delivery system, serving approximately 8.2 million people in nine states and the District of Columbia. With more than 152,000 employees and physicians, in a single year Kaiser Permanente schedules more than 34 million outpatient visits, delivers 85,000 babies, performs 452,000 surgeries, and fills about 113 million prescriptions.
(L to R): Veta T. Richardson of MCCA; Steven R. Zatkin of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.; and Guy Rounsaville, Jr. of Visa International
Steven R. Zatkin, senior vice president and general counsel of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the nonprofit health plan and hospital entities within the Kaiser Permanente program, leads a team of 72 lawyers, of whom 25 percent are minority and 60 percent are women. “Diversity is very important to us as a health care organization,” says Zatkin. “Our membership and the communities we serve are very diverse, as is our governing body, our leadership, and our workforce. Recognition of the importance of diversity is essential in meeting our mission and being successful. Our Legal and Government Relations Department is proud to contribute to this effort.”
Because health care law tends to have an underrepresentation of minorities, Kaiser Permanente’s law department takes concrete measures to remain diverse. It has begun to use minority-owned recruiting firms in its searches to fill attorney and Legal Division leadership positions and always insists on interviewing a diverse slate of candidates. Through the California Minority Counsel Program (CMCP), Kaiser Permanente spearheaded a project to introduce the law firms and companies that belong to CMCP to selected minority-owned recruiting firms.
All legal professionals are evaluated based on their in-house clients’ satisfaction. Clients are asked to rate each attorney and paraprofessional upon completion of a matter on a variety of client service attributes, including appropriate and useful communication, sound judgment, timeliness, work quality, and collaboration. These in-house clients do not hesitate to share their experience: Consistently, 60 to 80 percent of surveys are completed and returned.
Kaiser Permanente enjoys low turnover in the department. Its lawyers are committed to the organization’s mission, enjoy interesting work, and embrace the department’s results-oriented, teamwork approach.
The law department supports the company’s National Diversity Council, which serves as an advisor to the executive leadership. Kaiser Permanente’s practitioners also conduct periodic programs for employees at its home office on cultural sensitivity, sexual harassment prevention, and related issues.
Kaiser Permanente earned more three-star ratings than any other health plan surveyed, as noted in a 2005 report card by the California Office of the Patient Advocate. As an employer, Kaiser Permanente recently ranked 11th in the large employer category among the “100 Best Places to Work in the Bay Area” by the San Francisco Business Times, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, and the East Bay Business Times. In 2005, DiversityInc. recognized Kaiser Permanente as one of its “25 Notable Companies for Diversity,” one of the “Top 10 Companies for African Americans” and “Top 10 Companies for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender” employees.
From the November/December 2006 issue of Diversity & The Bar®