Introduction Kaiser Permanente (KP) was founded in California in 1945. It is one of the largest non-profit healthcare organizations in the United States, made up of three entities: the Kaiser Foundation Hospital, the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and the Permanente Medical Groups. It currently serves about 9.1 members within the following states: California, Colorado, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, and Georgia. With a few exceptions, it mostly operates under a managed care model, owning the physician network and the facilities its members use to receive medical services (Fast Facts, 2013). In this paper I will present the systems thinking model, its definition and its use as a diagnosis model. Then, I will evaluate Kaiser Permanente as a system and identify a problem or challenge. Finally, I will offer recommendations on how to overcome this problem. Systems Thinking Systems thinking is used to analyze how all departments within an organization function and can affect each other. When we analyze an organization as a system, we learn how it can work in an efficient manner and how to fix it when it’s not working properly. An organization functions effectively if all its parts or departments are well-integrated. In systems thinking we look at the organization as a whole and how all its parts work together (Ackoff, 1999). The open systems model presents the organization as a system, but expands it to include external components, such as the materials needed to function and the environment, and more internal factors such as culture and behavior (Harrison, 2004). However, the basic concept is still that we need to know the system as a whole and all its parts in order to identify problems and fix them. Ackoff states that there are four ways to treat problems in
