Eleanor Levin, MD
Cholesterol Management, Cardiac Rehabilitation & Heart Failure Programs
“People in professional societies and research institutions talk theoretically about how to do things better, but here at Kaiser Permanente we work together to affect change and improve patient care and patient outcomes. We’re able to make a difference in people’s lives.”
Since joining TPMG in 1989, Dr. Levin has worked to improve cardiac care. It started with the development of the Cholesterol Management and MultiFit (cardiac rehabilitation) Programs in Santa Clara, which were soon adopted regionwide. Then she collaborated on the development of a Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) Program, which served as a model for regionwide CHF Programs.
“The wonderful thing about Kaiser Permanente is that we’re able to take a long-term approach to caring for our patients,” Dr. Levin notes. “I never had any doubt that these efforts would have success, but I figured it would take eight to ten years.”
In 2001, she documented the success of KP’s integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to cardiovascular care, and gained national attention by presenting an abstract at an American Heart Association meeting, which demonstrated a substantial decline in cardiovascular mortality among KP patients between 1990 to 1998, compared to the rest of California. Dr. Levin is currently Chair of the Chiefs of Cardiology, Physician Manager of the Regional Cholesterol Management and MultiFit programs, and Regional Chair for Population Management of Cardiovascular Diseases.