Sunbelt Spotlight: Courage to Heal with Dr. Paul Bernstein

Starting in a world of iron lungs and the Great Depression, when women and babies were dying in poorly run charity hospitals, Dr. Sidney Garfield and Henry Kaiser began an innovative new way to provide health care that changed the face of American Medicine. For the past 75 years, this culture of innovation has continued to “thrive” and achieve the quadruple aim of improving the patient care, quality, affordability and physician sustainability. The transformation of health care involving telephone, video, remote diagnostics, chat, and AI is happening now. Sunbelt is proud to have published this story of an institution that evolved out of California's desert.

Dr. Paul Bernstein, former Medical Director, San Diego, was the Regional Coordinator for Telehealth and Virtual Care for Kaiser Permanente Southern California and a Physician Lead for Innovation and Patient Transformation. Under his leadership as Medical Director, he won the California Award for Performance Excellence (CAPE) and the National Malcolm Baldrige Best Practice Award for leadership and innovation. Dr. Bernstein is a practicing Head and Neck Surgeon and was the chairman of the Head and Neck Division of the American Cancer Society (ACS, 1987-2007) and was a member of the organization’s Board of Directors. He started the KP Historical Society to help preserve KP’s unique history and culture. Dr. Bernstein has written 7 novels, including, Courage to Heal, based on Sidney Garfield, the doctor who along with Henry Kaiser started KP and changed American Medicine.