Cooking Up Success: How Permanente Medicine’s “Ingredient Brand” Flavors the Kaiser Permanente Brand
// By Lisa D. Ellis //
When Permanente Medical Group leaders set out to create a unified brand for its eight medical groups around the country, the health system’s physician leaders went on the road to engage with physicians and patients at every single location. This was part of a comprehensive effort to understand what each medical group really stands for to define some common goals. The findings have enabled the medical groups to be developed as an “ingredient brand” to bring value to the overall Kaiser Permanente brand.
Defining Common Goals
Stephen M. Parodi, MD, associate executive director of The Permanente Medical Group and executive vice president of external affairs for The Permanente Federation
As an integral part of one of the nation’s largest integrated health systems, the Permanente Medical Groups have a tall order to fill when it comes to defining the common thread that connects the eight medical groups that include nearly 23,000 physicians spread out over eight states and the District of Columbia. The medical groups, with the Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, comprise Kaiser Permanente, a consortium that includes 690 medical offices and 39 hospitals. Finding a way to weave all these pieces into one brand story required extreme coordination and a commitment to the larger organizational vision.
“We started this major rebranding effort back in 2015 and, as part of this process, we wanted to identify the unique characteristics of Permanente Medicine [the new brand representing the medical groups] and determine how they integrated with the master brand,” explains Stephen M. Parodi, MD, who serves as the associate executive director of The Permanente Medical Group in Northern California, as well as executive vice president of external affairs for The Permanente Federation, which is the leadership and consulting organization for the Permanente Medical Groups.
Christine Paige, chief marketing officer, Kaiser Permanente
“With an increasingly cluttered health category, it’s more important than ever that our strong Kaiser Permanente brand and the promise of Permanente Medicine are interwoven and demonstrate our organization’s values and high quality of care,” adds Christine Paige, chief marketing executive of Kaiser Permanente.