Kaiser workers gather at Los Angeles Medical Center to protest inadequate staffing, long patients waits

Nearly 100 Kaiser Permanente psychologists, therapists and other professionals gathered at Kaiser’s Los Angeles Medical Center on Monday, Oct. 14 to protest staffing shortages and patient appointments that are sometimes not available for months.

The workers are represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). Statewide, the union membership totals around 4,000.

“Mental healthcare can’t wait,” NUHW President Sal Rosselli told the employees. “It’s time for Kaiser to treat behavioral health just like it treats cancer, diabetes and countless other medical illnesses — with urgency.”

Monday’s protest follows a similar gathering held Sunday at a Kaiser facility in Oakland. The healthcare giant presented the workers with its final, three-year labor proposal last month but union representatives said it was the same offer the union rejected two months earlier.

Kaiser reached a tentative labor agreement last month with a coalition of 11 unions that represent 85,000 Kaiser employees, ranging from optometrists and X-ray technicians, to surgical technicians and housekeepers. Two of the unions have already voted to approve the agreement and it’s expected to be ratified Friday.

NUHW spokesman Matthew Artz said his union plans to keep a 24/7 presence at Kaiser’s Oakland location and at the Los Angeles Medical Center in Hollywood to bring awareness of its situation.

“If there’s no progress we’re probably looking at another strike next month,” he said. “We’ll see where it goes.”

Kaiser’s response

In a statement issued Monday, Kaiser said it wants to bring negotiations to a close and return its focus to improving mental health for its members and the communities it serves, rather than on corporate campaigns and threats of work stoppages.

“It’s time for NUHW leaders to accept our proposals, which offer highly competitive wages and benefits and professional development opportunities, and are built on the same principles that guide all our labor agreements,” Kaiser said.

Kaiser said it has hired more than 400 new mental health workers throughout California this year in addition to building dozens of new treatment facilities and investing millions of dollars to help more people enter the mental health industry.

The contract proposal includes a 3% salary increase for the first year of the agreement. That drops to 2% the following two years with a 1.5% cash payment each year. It also addresses the concern of therapists that they have adequate time to engage in in-person and other patient-care activities while ensuring optimal patient access.

“We can’t do more without collaborating with our therapists, and for that we need a new contract with NUHW,”  the company said.

What employees are saying

Despite those improvements, employees say they’re still grappling with severe understaffing issues.

Vanessa Carrillo, a developmental case manager in Fontana, said patient needs sometimes morph from mild or moderate to critical because they aren’t seen soon enough with follow-up appointments. She manages authorization services for patients with autism and developmental disabilities.

“Kaiser is great with getting patients in for the initial evaluation, but sometimes it can be six to eight weeks for return appointments to see a therapist,” Carrillo said. “We can take walk-in appointments and triage them … but some of them end up not coming back even though there is a need to be seen.”

In 2013, Kaiser agreed to pay a $4 million fine for deficiencies in its delivery of mental health services.

Rosselli said crisis teams are sorely needed to deal with mental health emergencies. Currently, employees are pulled away from their regular duties to help when those kinds of situations arise, he said.

“If there’s an emergency they’ll have a therapist cancel their appointment with a patient who may have waited for months to be seen,” he said. “We’re going to be introducing legislation in Sacramento that would make it a law that follow-up therapy appointments be within 10 days unless they are not necessary.”

Tanya Deluz, who works as a marriage and family therapist in Pasadena, said employees there are stressed.

“I work every day through my lunch break and also stay late sometimes, not only to do paperwork, but to call patients back because they are calling us and their next available appointment might be two months out,” she said. “We spend a lot of extra hours working. There is a lot of burnout here.”