The Story of Dr. Sidney R. Garfield

This biography examines the historical leadership of Sidney R. Garfield, MD (1906-1984), Kaiser Permanente¿s founding physician, his professional development and his partnership with industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. Topics include the challenges posed by the Great Depression to the fundamental human need for affordable, quality health care; Garfield¿s discovery in the early 1930s of prepayment as a mechanism to fund industrial care for the construction workers on the Colorado River Aqueduct in the Mojave Desert; the partnership in the late 1930s with Henry J. Kaiser and Kaiser Industries at Grand Coulee, Washington, and Garfield¿s learnings there in prevention and well care; the outbreak of World War II in 1941 and the birth of The Permanente Foundation (the nonprofit health plan and hospitals in partnership with Garfield¿s physician groups) to provide industrial care for home front Kaiser steel and shipyard employees; the postwar attacks in the late 1940s and early `50s from the medical care establishment and fee-for- service providers threatened by challenges to the status quo; the west coast expansion of Kaiser Permanente, stresses in the partnership with Kaiser Industries, and the new bonds that formed in the 1950s; Garfield¿s hospital designs and well-care innovations, especially Garfield¿s advocacy for the computer in the 1960s as a tool to advance ¿total health.¿