Kaiser opening facility; 2 docs, nurse prac.

Kaiser Permanente health care providers will open its 2,500-square-foot Tehachapi Medical Office Building on Feb. 1, 2016.

Kaiser Senior Vice President David Womack told the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council Dec. 2 at the Tehachapi Police Department community room that the 5,000 Kaiser members in the Tehachapi area who have been served by a mobile health vehicle will now have a permanent presence. The Kaiser Tehachapi Medical Office Building is in the Tehachapi Junction strip mall near Starbucks and Pacino's. Susan McKenna, who manages the mobile unit, will manage the new Kaiser facility.

The office, which will provide ambulatory primary care, will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, with the possibility of weekend hours if demand arises.

Personnel will include two doctors, a nurse practitioner, licensed nurses, medical assistants and patient representatives. Twice a month, an advanced care interdisciplinary team that includes a social worker will provide geriatric and nutrition care. Specialists will be at the office on Wednesdays, McKenna said.

The Tehachapi Gran Fondo, of which Kaiser is a major sponsor, convinced Womack to participate in that cycling event.

"I bought a bike for the second year and did the 38 miles," Womack said. "Thank you for inspiring me to live a healthier life."

Womack said the history of the Kaiser Permanente pre-paid health care system began with Dr. Sidney Garfield, who was hired to care for workers on the construction of the Colorado River Aqueduct. According to the Kaiser Permanente web site, Garfield built his 12-bed Contractors General Hospital six miles from a tiny town called Desert Center in the Mojave Desert. As not all the workers had insurance or could pay, an insurance agent friend proposed a prepayment program, giving workers access to health care for five cents a day.

Garfield caught the attention of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, who engaged him to provide health care to the 6,500 employees who were building the massive Grand Coulee Dam. During WWII, Kaiser again pressed Garfield into service to provide health care to his shipyard employees. After the war, the shipyard workforce dropped from 90,000 to 13,000. Garfield and Henry J. Kaiser wanted this form of health care delivery to continue, and the Permanente Health Plan officially opened to the public on July 21, 1945. The organization kept the name Permanente "in part to clarify that they were not employees of Henry J. Kaiser." Several unions were instrumental in the success of the health plan.

"We've got something special, and we are open to the public," Womack said. "It's baked into our DNA from the 1930s."