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The mental health equity bill, Senate Bill 221, went into effect in July and requires health insurers to provide return appointments for mental health and substance abuse patients no later than 10 days before the previous session.
The American Psychological Association recommends weekly therapy for people with depression — doubly so for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
This month-long strike is about patient care. According to the NUHW statement, Kaiser therapists want the organization to give as much attention to mental health care as it does to medical care.
Amazing therapists have now lost a lot of wages for holding on to their status quo.
“Until Kaiser stops gambling with patient lives and comes up with a system that allows therapists to be better for patients, we’re going to keep hitting,” said Kimberly Hollingsworth-Horner, a Kaiser therapist in Fresno.
Hollingsworth-Horner, who serves on the negotiating committee, said going a month without pay was “difficult” but “nothing” compared to the months-long waits between treatment sessions that patients have endured for years.
California In 2013, $4 million for Kaiser mental health care was delayed and denied, but mental health care wait times have not improved.
The NUHW said in a statement about the strike that Kaiser was unable to increase staffing despite increased demand for mental health care during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In fact, it appears Kaiser is bleeding clinics: The union said 377 patients in the Northern California region left the company between June 2021 and May 2022. In all, more than 660 have quit.
A NUHW study of more than 200 clinics found that 80 percent said their workloads were unsustainable and 70 percent were unable to “treat patients based on care and medical need.”
Instead of quitting, the clinics on the picket lines are working to change the way Kaiser manages its mental health department.
Melody Bumgardner, a psychologist who works at Kaiser Santa Clara and Campbell Satellite, has worked at Kaiser for 22 years and said the organization had better working conditions during her first decade there, but conditions and changes have worsened in recent years.
“When I started working here, we were fully operational,” Bumgardner said on the picket line outside Kaiser San Jose on Thursday. “It used to be very difficult to get a job at Kaiser. People wanted to work here and people stayed a long time. But in the last 10 years, most of the people who started here usually left before three or five years.”
Bumgardner said she has stayed with the company for so long because she values ​​working with the “diverse population” of patients she sees and the relationships she has built with colleagues over the past two decades. She also wants to see real change, for Kaiser to use its “tremendous resources” to provide more timely mental health services to its members.
“We stand with Kaiser in this strike and we stand with patients who have been denied adequate mental health care for too long,” said Jeffrey Chen-Harding, a licensed clinical social worker at Kaiser in San Francisco.
Despite Wednesday’s standoff, Kaiser has refused to schedule additional negotiating sessions with the union, and there are currently no further talks. Kaiser officials were not immediately available to comment on the latest negotiations with the union.
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