For more than a decade, Kaiser Permanente has been under the microscope for shortcomings in mental health care, even as it is held in high esteem on the medical side.
This story also ran on The Orange County Register. It can be republished for free.
A series of columns by Bernard J. Wolfson addressing the challenges consumers face in California’s health care landscape.
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In 2013, California regulators fined the insurer $4 million for failing to reduce wait times, giving patients inaccurate information, and improperly tracking appointment data. And in 2023, KP agreed to pay $50 million, the largest penalty ever levied by the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, for failing to provide timely care, maintain a sufficient number of mental health providers, and oversee its providers effectively.
Now, Kaiser Permanente is back in the hot seat as mental health workers in Southern California wage a strike that’s in its fourth month. KP therapists and union representatives accuse the HMO giant of saddling workers with excessive caseloads and often forcing patients to wait twice as long as the state allows for follow-up appointments. They say that the staff is burned out and that this work environment makes it hard to recruit clinicians, exacerbating the staffing problem.
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