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What is preventive care?
Preventive care is used to prevent or catch diseases before you have symptoms. It includes basic care like routine exams and screenings — and most health plans cover it at no extra cost.
Your preventive care needs can depend on things like your age, gender, and medical history. With your Kaiser Permanente electronic health record, your care team can track your personal health needs over time. So you’ll get personalized care recommendations and screening reminders to help you stay healthy.
If you get treatment or testing for existing health issues or new symptoms, that’s diagnostic care, not preventive. With diagnostic care, you may owe a copay, coinsurance, or deductible. Learn more about the cost differences for preventive versus diagnostic care.
What preventive services are covered?
Depending on your Kaiser Permanente health plan, you may get many preventive services at no extra cost, like:
- Routine physical exams
- Vaccines and immunizations
- Cancer tests and screenings at certain ages for breast, colon, lung, and cervical cancer
- Mental health screenings
- Screenings related to cardiac care, diabetes, osteoporosis, and domestic violence
Rebecca’s journey: “Early detection is the key to my story.”
Thanks to preventive screenings, Kaiser Permanente member Rebecca discovered her colon cancer early. This allowed her care team to start treatment before the cancer spread.
Screenings promote healthier lives
At Kaiser Permanente, we’re committed to catching diseases before symptoms appear, when treatment can be more effective. That’s why prevention is built into everything we do.
Our screening rates for colon, cervical, and breast cancers are higher than the national average.1
And our members are 33% less likely to die early from heart disease and 20% less likely to die early from cancer.2
Preventive care resources
Getting the care you need is important. These resources can help you understand what preventive care you may need and how much it may cost, so you can avoid any confusion.
What is diagnostic care?
Find out the cost differences between preventive versus diagnostic care.
Interactive screenings tool
Answer a few questions for a personalized list of recommended preventive screenings.
Cost estimate tool
Get the estimated cost for many preventive and diagnostic services.
Benefit summary
See which preventive services your Kaiser Permanente health plan covers.
Healthy living
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle can pave the way to better health and well-being by reducing your risks for disease.
Read more about how you can stay healthy
1 Kaiser Permanente 2023 HEDIS® scores. Benchmarks provided by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Quality Compass® and represent all lines of business. Kaiser Permanente combined region scores were provided by the Kaiser Permanente Department of Care and Service Quality. The source for data contained in this publication is Quality Compass 2023 and is used with the permission of NCQA. Quality Compass 2023 includes certain CAHPS data. Any data display, analysis, interpretation, or conclusion based on these data is solely that of the authors, and NCQA specifically disclaims responsibility for any such display, analysis, interpretation, or conclusion. Quality Compass® and HEDIS® are registered trademarks of NCQA. CAHPS® is a registered trademark of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
2 Elizabeth A. McGlynn, PhD, et al., “Measuring Premature Mortality Among Kaiser Permanente Members Compared to the Community,” July 20, 2022.
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