Psychologists, therapists and other mental health professionals who work for Kaiser Permanente in Southern California went on strike Monday morning, protesting the health care organization’s failure to resolve ongoing issues that hinder his mental health care.
The National Health Care Workers Union said nearly 2,400 mental health workers launched their strike action after Kaiser management rejected proposals the union said would curb staff turnover and to improve care. The NUHW contract for the workers expired on September 30.
“Unless we strike, our colleagues will continue to walk away,” San Diego psychologist Josh Garcia said in a union statement before the walkout, “and our patients will continue to struggle in an underfunded and underfunded system. -workforce that does not meet their needs.”
Before the strike, Kaiser said it made strong proposals to improve therapists’ wages, benefits and preparation time. He criticized the union for “slowing down the negotiation process”, saying any strike action was “because NUHW leadership had chosen this path – rather than one leading to an agreement”.
The strike comes a year after Kaiser agreed to a $200 million settlement with California regulators, who found that patients were subjected to excessive wait times for therapy appointments. Kaiser agreed to pay a $50 million fine and spend $150 million over five years to improve its mental health care.
Kaiser said that even before the state’s settlement, it began increasing spending on mental health care. The organization said it has spent more than $1 billion to expand its mental health care in recent years and has increased its mental health workforce in Southern California by more than 30 percent.
Mental health professionals who work for Kaiser Permanente in Southern California march on a picket line at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
As the health care organization saw “this mental health crisis across California and across the country, we knew we had to act quickly,” said Rhonda Chabran, vice president of behavioral health and wellness. -be for Southern California and Hawaii.
Union leaders said problems persisted. In a recent letter to the state, NUHW asserted that Kaiser continues to violate California law, which sets time limits for providing mental health care, and that “these failures are widespread.” NUHW said that in its surveys of Kaiser mental health workers in Southern California, 62% of respondents said their departments were understaffed enough to provide timely and appropriate care.
The union said it is pushing for higher wages, better benefits and more guaranteed time to complete tasks outside of patient appointments. NUHW members lamented that unlike Northern California, where the union said Kaiser therapists are now guaranteed seven hours a week to handle tasks such as preparing treatment plans, therapists in California of the South at Kaiser can only have two hours a week to do this.
“There are many things we need to do to prepare for a visit: develop appropriate treatment plans. Writing letters for our clients…They don’t give us time to do that,” said Lisa Delgadillo, a Kaiser psychiatric social worker in Fontana. “People think therapy is just talking to people, but it’s so much more than that.”
Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson, a psychiatric counselor, said she sees a dozen or more patients a day in a Kaiser virtual therapy program for “mild to moderate” patients. Sessions each last half an hour, she said, but scheduling and other tasks cut into that time.
Gutierrez-Thompson compared it to that of a factory worker. “It’s really hard to remain a good therapist in this system,” she said. “We have to make choices like, ‘Do I make eye contact or do I finish this note?’ »
NUHW also proposed a series of increases totaling more than 30% over four years. Union leaders said the pay increases were necessary to bring their pay in line with that of other healthcare professionals at Kaiser.
Kaiser said its Southern California therapists already enjoy generous benefits and compensation, with salaries above market rates, and that it has proposed raises at the bargaining table totaling more than 18 percent. He also said he had offered more time for tasks outside of face-to-face appointments, but that the union’s proposal could prevent therapists from seeing patients for a significant portion of their work week.
The health system said it has plans in place to minimize possible disruptions from the strike, which has no set duration. Because Kaiser relies not only on its employees but also on “an external network of contracted providers” for mental health care, the company estimates that 60 percent of its patients receiving mental health and substance abuse services receive currently receiving care from providers who will not participate in the NUHW strike. .
If their regular provider is on strike, Kaiser said, “patients will have the option to be seen by another professional from our extensive network of highly trained and licensed therapists.”
Union leaders urged the state to keep tabs on how Kaiser was providing care during the strike, noting that the state Department of Managed Health Care discovered it had canceled appointments for dozens of thousands of patients during a walkout by therapists in Northern California two years ago.
