‘Historic moment’ for mental health parity. Kaiser workers applaud Newsom’s oversight goals
Leaders of the National Union of Healthcare Workers applauded Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday for committing to crack down on health care companies that fail to provide patients with mental health care comparable with that they provide for physical illnesses.
During his budget address Friday, Newsom said the state’s Department of Managed Health Care was “getting in the business of real enforcement, not tacit enforcement.” He added that he would highlight any company found to show a lack of accountability on parity for mental health patients.
“I want to prepare folks for some high-profile fines,” Newsom said. “They (DMHC) will do their job. I don’t need legislation to do that. I don’t need to be encouraged to do that. They just need to do their damn job, and they need to go aggressively on parity. I’ve been talking about this for too many years.”
NUHW represents 4,000 psychologists, therapists and other behavioral health workers at Kaiser Permanente, and the Department of Managed Health Care regulates Kaiser and other health maintenance organizations.
Union delegates will be meeting Jan. 31 with DMHC leadership to discuss their concerns about delays that Kaiser patients have faced in getting behavioral health care. The union has made official complaints against Kaiser over the past nine years, saying it was not providing timely care as regulations dictated. Those complaints led to a $4 million fine and ongoing monitoring.
“This is a historic moment for achieving real parity for mental health care in California and could possibly set an example for the country,” said NUHW President Sal Rosselli, in response to the governor’s statement. “We have been doing the heavy lifting holding Kaiser accountable. Now, the governor — in the strongest possible terms — is on record announcing that he will force state regulators to be on the side of patients and clinicians, instead of the side of providers such as Kaiser.”
Kaiser Permanente executive John Nelson said the company’s leaders are glad the governor is taking a passionate stance on making mental health a priority.
“We believe that no other health care organization is addressing the national crisis in mental health as aggressively and comprehensively as Kaiser Permanente,” said Nelson, the company’s vice president of communications. “We have made great progress and are doing even more, while continuing to deliver the highest-rated mental health care in the state. Unfortunately, the leadership of NUHW continues to attack our program, rather than helping address the very real challenges in mental health care today.”
In interviews with The Sacramento Bee, NUHW-represented workers have said that Kaiser’s patients wait far too long to get the ongoing care that they need. They said that Kaiser’s management works hard to get patients in for a first session because state regulators are closely monitoring those statistics, but the company fails when it comes to providing timely ongoing care.
“There are patients at my clinic who must wait months to see their therapist. That’s not good therapy, and it’s time that Kaiser — and all providers — are finally held accountable,” said Ken Rogers, an Elk Grove psychologist.
He and other behavioral health care workers said they provide excellent care, if patients can make it through lengthy waiting periods. The union has posted some patient stories at https://nuhw.org/kaiser-dont-deny/.
Sarah Soroken, a marriage and family therapist in Fairfield, spoke at an NUHW rally at California’s state Capitol in December, saying: “I field way too many calls from patients and their families, pleading for sooner appointments and support: families with adolescents and young adults, newly diagnosed with severe mental illness, who are getting worse or require hospitalization while enduring long waits between appointments; patients who have been sent outside of Kaiser for therapy to Kaiser’s overburden contract panels; or patients who have been denied coverage for individual therapy altogether, calling back with worsened symptoms and begging to receive an appointment with a therapist. This is heart-wrenching and intolerable. Our staffing problem at Kaiser prolongs suffering, ruins lives and is in fact deadly.”
Soroken and Rogers joined roughly 300 NUHW members and supporters demanding tougher oversight of Kaiser in protests at the Capitol and at DMHC headquarters in downtown Sacramento. The union has held two weeklong strikes at Kaiser facilities in California, the most recent one in December.
NUHW workers have been bargaining for a new labor contract with Kaiser since July 2018, turning down the companies last, best and final offer late last year. They say they wan the company to shorten patients’ wait times and provide therapists with more time to complete the administrative work affiliated with each case.
Also in his address on Friday, Newsom said he is convening a Behavioral Health Task Force to “review existing policies and programs and coordinate system changes to prevent and respond to the impacts of mental illness and substance abuse in California.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 7:50 AM.
