Kaiser Permanente is an integrated managed-care consortium founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney R. Garfield and headquartered in Oakland, California. It is one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States, serving more than 12 million members across roughly 39 hospitals and 700 medical offices.
The organization comprises three interdependent entities: the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and the regional Permanente Medical Groups. Originating from wartime industrial health programs at Kaiser shipyards and steel mills, it pioneered the prepaid group-practice model that became the template for the modern health maintenance organization. Kaiser employs more than 87,000 physicians and nurses, operates across eight states and the District of Columbia, and is widely cited as a structural counterexample to the fee-for-service mainstream of American healthcare.