Donna McGee started her career with Kaiser Permanente in 1990 with a high school diploma and a dream.

She began her journey in supply chain as a storekeeper. She worked there for 4 years as a member of SEIU.

"When I started out, I had my high school diploma," says McGee. "Getting promoted into a management position, I needed to get my education."

So, she took some courses. Then she kept going. She earned 3 college degrees — all with the help of tuition reimbursement.

During this time, McGee moved into other roles. First, she went to supply chain management. She's now the site director at Antioch Medical Center. 

Finding support

McGee credits her success to the help she had on each step.

"It has been amazing to have the support of the organization to get that continuing education to allow my career to grow," says McGee.

Kaiser Permanente and its labor partners encourage lifelong learning for employees. In 2024, a record 35,000 Kaiser Permanente employees used the tuition reimbursement benefit. Employees can receive up to $3,000 each year for completing courses to continue their education, get a certificate or earn a degree.

Attending school and working isn't easy, but McGee found a way to make it work. Sometimes, she even took her physical education classes during her lunch break. With support from her management team, she earned an associate degree in business administration and management.

After one degree, McGee knew she could do more. She went on to get both her bachelor's and master's degrees online in business administration and management. Tuition reimbursement helped her all along the way.

'Go after your dreams'

McGee played a key role on the opening team at Antioch Medical Center. She feels privileged to lead and work closely with teams to deliver exceptional care to members. Her dreams came true. She wants others to do the same.

"Shoot for the stars," McGee says. "Use the tuition reimbursement benefit that you have available to you and go after your dreams. You can do anything at Kaiser Permanente."

Staff overtime soared. Patient satisfaction scores plunged. Large numbers of contract nurses filled shifts each day to keep up with patient care.

By the end of 2022, staffing challenges at the Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center in Southern California called for drastic action.

Today, those struggles have eased, thanks to more staff nurses and a workplace innovation that tracks staffing data. Stakeholders from the executive suite to the front lines credit one thing for the turnaround: partnership.

“We worked closely with labor unions, made agreements, and stuck to them,” says Mitch Winnik, senior vice president and area manager for Downey. “The results have been amazing.”

“Patient care is getting better because labor and management are working together,” adds Paul Ciriacks, a registered nurse at Downey and UNAC/UHCP member.

How the change happened

The solution started with a simple step: setting up monthly meetings between hospital and union leaders to discuss staffing.

At these meetings, they quickly agreed on 2 main goals:

• Hire more nurses to reduce overtime and rely less on contract workers. A key tactic was attracting hundreds of applicants through day-long hiring events organized by management and labor.
• Follow existing staffing agreements to ensure frontline workers have a say in decisions. Make sure they arrive on time, take breaks, and avoid unnecessary overtime.

The results

Success by the numbers:

• Six hiring events helped bring in about 1,000 new nurses.
• Contract nurses dropped from 270 at the end of 2022 to just 20 in 2024.
• Patient satisfaction scores at the hospital hit an all-time high — rising 35% in 2 years in the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey.

Building trust through transparency

Supporting Downey’s success is a new staffing dashboard that covers all job classifications. It allows managers to share real-time data about staff vacancies, hiring progress and overtime usage with frontline workers.

Downey and Panorama City Medical Center are piloting the dashboard. By 2026, the staffing dashboard will be available to all Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Southern California.

Managers access the dashboard — containing sensitive personnel data — using a password. Entering a unit-based team’s name and ID number initiates an automated process that pulls recruitment and payroll data from HRconnect.

The result is an up-to-the-minute glimpse of the team’s staffing situation — and a comparison to the previous month to highlight personnel trends.

Charlene Young, a nurse manager, used the dashboard to explain a recent rise in overtime. It showed that 2 open positions were in the process of being filled. "That should help with the situation," she told her team in Downey’s medical-surgical-telemetry unit.

Andre Welch, a nurse assistant and SEIU-UHW member, says seeing the data makes him feel more confident. “For me, it always helps when they show me the hard numbers.”