[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 44 (Friday, March 14, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E429]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               HONORING THE LIFE OF DR. CECIL C. CUTTING

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, March 14, 2008

  Mr. STARK. Madam Speaker, Dr. Cecil C. Cutting, the pioneering 
physician who served as the first Executive Director of The Permanente 
Medical Group (TPMG) died Sunday, March 2 at the age of 97. His death 
came one day after the physicians of TPMG came together to celebrate 
the 60th anniversary of the founding of the group, and to honor his 
contributions and the Medical Group's achievements.
  Dr. Cutting was the first physician hired by Dr. Sidney R Garfield 
when Dr. Garfield joined forces with Henry J. Kaiser to provide 
prevention-oriented, prepaid care for the workers building the Grand 
Coulee Dam in 1938. When the U.S. entered World War II, and Henry 
Kaiser was awarded the contract to build Liberty ships in the shipyards 
in Oakland and Richmond, Drs. Garfield and Cutting moved the innovative 
health care program to Richmond, California. They provided medical care 
for Kaiser's 200,000 workers at wartime shipyards in Richmond, 
California; Vancouver, Washington; and Portland, Oregon, as well as at 
Kaiser's Steel Mill in Fontana, California. Based on the quality of 
care they were able to provide to the shipyard workers, Henry Kaiser's 
shipyards set records for the speed with which seaworthy Liberty ships 
were completed in support of the war effort. The program was so 
successful, and the care delivered of such high quality, that the 
unions representing the workers convinced Drs. Garfield and Cutting and 
Mr. Kaiser to open the program to the public when the war ended in 
1945.
  On February 21, 1948, Dr. Cutting, Dr. Garfield and five physician 
colleagues founded The Permanente Medical Group, and selected Dr. 
Cutting as the first Executive Director, a role he held for 20 years. 
Under his extraordinary leadership, and in the face of serious 
opposition from organized medicine at the county, state, and national 
levels, a firm foundation was laid that set TPMG on course to become 
the largest and most successful medical group in the country, and 
Kaiser Permanente the largest non-profit private health care program in 
America.
  Dr. Cutting was born in 1910 in Campbell, California. He received his 
A.B. and MD degrees from Stanford University, and completed his 
residency at Stanford Lane Hospital and San Francisco County Hospital 
in surgery and orthopedics in 1938, just as Dr. Garfield began 
recruiting physicians to provide care for the workers at the Grand 
Coulee Dam site. Despite a warning from then Stanford Medical School 
Dean Loren Chandler, who felt that he ``could never permit Cecil to get 
mixed up in such an operation,'' and opposition from physician 
colleagues in the Bay Area who argued that prepaid group practice was 
``unethical,'' Dr. Cutting was attracted by the idea of combining 
prepayment, prevention, and group practice, and envisioned an 
opportunity to redefine health care delivery based on those precepts. 
He joined Dr. Garfield at Grand Coulee, and formed a collegial and 
professional partnership that would span more than 40 years, and have a 
profound impact on care delivery in the United States. Together they 
built an ethical care delivery system founded on the precepts of 
integration, prepayment, prevention, and multispecialty group practice, 
and committed to quality care, stewardship of member resources, and 
community benefit.

  Dr. Cutting ensured that the physicians of The Permanente Medical 
Group would be responsible for the organization of medical services, 
and would have the freedom and independence collectively to manage and 
take responsibility for both the quality and value of the care and 
service provided. He established robust investments in health education 
and health promotion, began a research program which led to the 
establishment of the Division of Research, and established the first 
medicine and surgery residency programs in Kaiser Permanente. 
Throughout his life, he was one of the country's leading advocates for 
the benefit to society, and to the profession, of prepaid group 
practice.
  ``We wanted to create a medical environment in which the doctors' 
work would be interesting and stimulating, where they would have 
reasonable income and security, and very importantly . . . fit into the 
accepted framework and code of ethics of American medicine, while at 
the same time develop an effective and efficient alternative to fee-
for-service practice,'' he once said. Speaking at the White House 
Conference on Health in 1965 he challenged health care policy makers to 
shift the emphasis in public debate toward keeping people well: ``We 
ought to promote an enthusiasm for taking care of ourselves.''
  That same year he addressed the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science (AAAS) and forecast the arrival of the 
electronic medical record, encouraging his peers not to feel threatened 
by computers. In the dawn of the computer age, he predicted that ``All 
[medical] histories and findings would be recorded by computers and 
made available to the physician,'' Dr. Cutting told AAAS. ``This 
mechanization must not be construed as an impersonalization of the 
relationships between the physician and his patient. The challenge is 
to do quite the opposite. By increasing the physician's knowledge of 
the patient . . . his time with the patient should be much more 
constructively utilized to know the patient as a person and to guide 
him through sickness.''
  Above all else, Dr. Cutting is remembered for his loyalty to The 
Permanente Medical Group, and his commitment to the Kaiser Permanente 
Medical Care Program.
  Dr. Robert Pearl, the Executive Director and CEO of TPMG, noted that 
``the organizational DNA which Dr. Cutting helped to create 60 years 
ago can be seen today in our outstanding quality outcomes and our 
national leadership in disease prevention, cardiovascular care, genetic 
research, deployment of advanced IT systems and health care policy.'' 
In 2007 TPMG established the Cecil C. Cutting Leadership Award, to 
recognize outstanding physician leaders, and in recognition of Dr. 
Cutting's extraordinary contributions as Executive Director of The 
Permanente Medical Group, and the contributions he made to improving 
health care in the United States.

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