In Kaiser Permanente‘s hospital exam rooms, artificial intelligence is listening—and that’s a good thing. “It brings the joy back into… getting to know a patient,” says Assistant Area Medical Director Dr. William Tseng. “It restores the connection between doctor and patient, allowing us to actually see each other during the exam.” AI is now a routine part of patient care at Kaiser’s Southern California facilities, where it’s replacing “COWS,” computers on wheels, that can act as a physical barrier between physicians and their patients. Ambient AI functions as a scribe, listening to the exam room conversation (with patient permission), taking notes, and later transcribing everything to the medical record.
In collaboration with generative AI platform Abridge, Kaiser’s San Diego facilities have rolled out the region’s biggest deployment of “assisted clinical documentation” technology, and Tseng is excited about its potential for the entire healthcare industry.
His AI assistant, he says, “[doesn’t] miss things. It improves quality and efficiency.” AI has applications for diagnosis, as well. For example, “in radiology, we can use it to pick up diseases earlier by analyzing images of potential strokes and [helping doctors prioritize which scans they review,] based on severity,” Tseng explains.
Kaiser Permanente also rolled out two new hospitals in San Diego County in recent years. The latest, San Marcos Medical Center, opened in August of 2023. It has a labor and delivery ward, a neonatal ICU, a 24-hour emergency department, and 206 single-patient rooms.
Like many health systems in the area and the nation, Kaiser Permanente is no stranger to struggles with staffing. In late 2023, San Diego Kaiser workers went on strike as part of walkouts across four states to protest exhausting working conditions related to labor shortages and pay that didn’t cover the current cost of living. The walkouts resulted in a new contract that led to what President Biden called “historic” increases in healthcare worker wages.
New San Marcos Medical Facility
Two of Kaiser’s San Diego medical centers nabbed a top-60 spot on US News and World Report’s 2023 list of the best hospitals. The publication named Zion Medical Center in Mission Valley and San Diego Medical Center in Kearny Mesa (both Kaiser facilities) among the best hospitals for maternity care this year. Contrasting a recent trend in maternity ward closures across California, the new San Marcos maternity ward opened shortly after two local facilities shuttered L&D services.
Additionally, the organization’s cancer survival rates consistently beat the National Cancer Institute’s SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) averages. A study published in 2024 showed Kaiser patients with colorectal, breast, and lung cancers have better survival rates after five years than other patients tracked in SEER data.
Tseng attributes this to Kaiser Permanente’s integrated model, where members have access to preventive care, smoking cessation programs, and cancer screenings—along with a national referral system providing regional Kaiser doctors with a comprehensive database related to cancer treatment, to ensure they’re delivering the most up-to-date and effective therapies.
