Kaiser Permanente mental health clinicians to kick-off strike Monday

[Omaha Steve]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 7, 2018

Emeryville, Calif. – Four thousand mental health clinicians are striking Kaiser Permanente facilities across California Dec. 10 to 14 to demand that the HMO honor its pledge to fix understaffing issues that force patients to wait a month or more for therapy appointments. The strike will potentially shut down mental health services at more than 100 Kaiser clinics and medical facilities from San Diego to Sacramento.



Caregivers represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers will begin forming picket lines at 6 a.m. Monday morning. Among the locations where strikers will be picketing:



· Los Angeles Medical Center, 4867 W. Sunset Blvd.

· Anaheim Medical Center, 3440 E. La Palma Ave.

· Fontana Medical Center, 9961 Sierra Ave.

· San Diego Medical Center, 9455 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.

· Fresno Medical Center, 7300 N. Fresno St.

· Sacramento Medical Center, 2025 Morse Ave.

· San Francisco Medical Center, 2425 Geary Blvd.

· San Jose Medical Center, 275 Hospital Pkwy.



Pickets will run from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., with lunchtime rallies. In addition to NUHW, the California Nurses Association and Stationary Engineers, Local 39 have provided strike sanction, which allows their roughly 20,000 members at Kaiser medical facilities to strike in sympathy without fear of reprisal by Kaiser.



See attached document for a full schedule of picket locations and contact information for psychologists, therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and addiction medicine specialists available for interviews.



Former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, founder of The Kennedy Forum, will join the picket line Monday in San Francisco and Tuesday in Oakland. The Kennedy Forum, a leading mental health advocacy organization, fights for enforcement of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, also known as the Federal Parity Law, which requires insurers to cover illnesses of the brain, such as depression or addiction, no more restrictively than illnesses of the body, such as diabetes or cancer. Kennedy will headline a community forum on achieving true parity for mental health care. Kaiser clinicians and patients will also participate in the forum, which is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Masonic Center, 3903 Broadway (two blocks from the Kaiser Oakland Medical Center).



“The CDC recently reported that life expectancy has dropped yet again due to rising numbers of overdoses and suicides,” Kennedy said. “Timely access to care is critical. Insurers who subject those with mental health and substance use disorders to a separate and unequal system of care must be held accountable.”



“Access to mental health care is a civil rights issue,” NUHW President Sal Rosselli said. “This strike is a clear message to Kaiser that its mental health clinicians won’t stand by silently while their patients can’t get the care they need.”



Clinicians want more authority to apply their professional judgement to treatment decisions, including the frequency of appointments and whether individual or group therapy is indicated. In Southern California, clinicians want Kaiser to stop sending one-third of patients (approximately 40,000 people per year) to firms that contract with private therapists, who are not accountable to Kaiser and often don’t have access to patient medical records.



Kaiser is currently subject to state-ordered outside monitoring of its mental health services following three consecutive state surveys that found Kaiser was failing to provide its patients with timely access to mental health services in violation of state law.



Since 2015, the union and its members have tried to work with Kaiser managers to improve care, but the HMO has refused to make meaningful changes to working conditions or access to therapy appointments despite reporting a $3.8 billion profit last year and a $2.9 billion profit in the first nine months of 2018.



Kaiser’s ratio of mental health clinicians to Kaiser members has remained essentially unchanged since 2015 (approximately one full-time equivalent clinician for every 3,000 Kaiser members in California). Since contract bargaining began in June, Kaiser has rejected clinicians’ proposals to boost staffing to end long waits for therapy appointments.



“We have not seen any meaningful improvements,” said Clem Papazian, a Kaiser licensed clinical social worker. “Clinicians are booked solid for weeks and patients are waiting far too long for therapy appointments. This is an untenable situation that should have ended years ago. We still want to work with Kaiser to solve this problem, but first Kaiser has to be willing to use its immense resources to truly help its patients seeking mental health treatment.”