Dr. Brian Joseph Tanczos, MD

About Me

Thank you for looking at my home page. This is a chance for you to know me better and why I feel Kaiser Permanente is the best health care you can find.

The web page also has links to valuable web sites that will help you understand health and well being, and how to promote your own health.

I went to California State University at Hayward for my bachelor's degree where I specialized in cell and molecular biology and did research for the EPA on lung fibrosis. I stayed on California State Hayward for my master's degree and was able to take graduate classes at University of California at Berkeley. I did my master's research and thesis at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto on cancer genes. Yes, I had the honor of meeting with Dr. Pauling many times and can be seen grinning next to him in a documentary. I went on to medical school at University of Southern California and spent a lot of time in Los Angeles County Hospital where diagnoses range from pneumonia to leprosy. I …completed my residency at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland and stayed on as a Chief Resident, which is a year of teaching new residents.

Since I trained at Kaiser Permanente Oakland, I have a very good knowledge of the our system. I initially worked in the clinic at Kaiser Permanente Pleasanton for several years and was given the chance to join the group of doctors who only work in the hospital. These doctors are called Hospital Based Specialists (HBS), and are a group of internal medicine doctors who only work in the hospital. They are just like your medicine doctors who you see in the office, but HBS doctors stay in the hospital all day and are dedicated to all your hospital needs. The great thing about this is they are physically there with you in the hospital all day and can see you many times and as quickly as you need!

I had the chance to really appreciate working for Kaiser Permanente when I left for a year and a half in 1998 to go work in a resort setting and had to work in private practice. I thought I had traded Kaiser Permanente for paradise, but quickly found that I had traded the freedom to practice medicine the way I believe in, to becoming a paper shuffler. I was spending less and less quality time with my patients and more and more time trying to decipher paperwork. The worse part was being limited on caring for patients by an administrator. I was fortunate to be given the chance to return to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Walnut Creek in 2000, and once again I am happy because I can spend all my time caring for patients and once again free to practice medicine the way I feel I should.

I am a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a member of the American College of Physicians - American Society of Internal Medicine, a member of the California Medical Association, and a Member of the Alameda - Contra Costa Medical Association.

I hope this gives you a good introduction to who I am. I feel privileged to be your doctor. Kaiser Permanente expects me to care of you as if you were part of my own family, and that's just the way I like it!