[ad_1]
State and local health officials are investigating complaints that Kaiser Permanente made dangerous cuts to emergency room mental health staff in Santa Rosa despite a high number of psychiatric patients.
The union, which represents prominent mental health professionals, says staff cuts in emergency rooms from midnight to 6 a.m. are leaving many mentally ill without care or supervision.
The union has asked the state and county to investigate reports of at least two suicide attempts in emergency rooms over the past weekend.
Kaiser officials dismissed the complaints as a labor tactic in current contract negotiations. The health care agency said in a statement that state investigators are obligated to review such complaints, regardless of their merits.
But the National Health Care Employees Union, which represents critical mental health workers, said the complaints were true and that Kaiser failed to provide 24/7 mental health care in the emergency room. The workers went on strike for a month.
In some cases, psychiatric patients are being held overnight in emergency rooms until a qualified mental health professional is available to perform a psychiatric evaluation in the morning, said Fred Sivey, the association’s director of research.
According to Sivey, The strike began on August 16, Kaiser relies on a “skeleton staff” consisting of on-call psychiatrists and administrators to manage psychiatric patients who come to the emergency room during the night and early morning hours. If that doesn’t work, he says, they’ll take more drastic action in late August.
“Instead of doing the right thing and getting staff… they simply blocked care from midnight to 6am,” he said.
Sevey added that Kaiser “reduced the standard of care” by returning to virtual or “tele-psych” services between 6 a.m. and 7:59 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 11:59 p.m.
A screenshot of communications obtained by the union from an emergency room manager describes those times and lists the time between midnight and 5:59 a.m. as “no psychosis.” The item was ordered on September 1st.
Company officials said they would not comment on internal communications.
Union officials reported that emergency room staff reported that over the weekend of September 9, the number of psychiatric patients admitted to the emergency room reached more than ten and were receiving appropriate care and attention.
“On Saturday morning (September 10), two patients tried to kill themselves while they were in the (emergency room),” Sevey said. “The conditions associated with those (attempted) suicides were observed – one by hanging and the other by slitting their throats… All this raises concerns about the inadequacy of psychiatrists in the emergency room.”
Emergency room staff confirmed the two cases separately, with no mental health professionals on duty, despite security guards on hand, said the staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Kaiser said it’s not uncommon for hospital emergency departments to admit psychiatric emergency patients, and their volume does not depend on staffing levels at any given time. The current strike will make matters worse, company officials said.
“Instead, the increase was driven by a crisis in mental health care needs in our community and exacerbated by the state and national shortage of mental health care providers and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and wildfires in our community,” the company’s statement said.
For the past several weeks, the union has asked the California Department of Managed Health Care, which regulates HMOs, to investigate Kaiser’s staffing levels in the emergency department. On September 11, the coalition raised concerns about the reported suicide attempts with the Sonoma County Department of Health Services’ Behavioral Health Unit.
Health Services Director Tina Rivera said last week that county employees have not received reports of attempted suicides from sources outside the union. But she said the county is looking into the reports.
“We have been speaking with Kaiser leadership who have escalated these allegations to their local, state and national leadership,” Rivera said in an email. “It is my understanding that Kaiser is contacting the Department of Managed Health Care.”
The state Department of Managed Health Care, which is reviewing Kaiser’s mental health care services, is responding to earlier union complaints that Kaiser was not providing timely mental health appointments during the strike. Department spokeswoman Rachel Arezola said the state’s “executive investigation” will include complaints about emergency room staff.
[ad_2]
Source link