[Crsd] Fw: Statewide Kaiser mental health strike set to begin Dec. 16

[Monty Kroopkin]

Fellow Workers, i am just "spreading the strike". Please contact NUHW for further information. Monty Kroopkin, branch secretary
IWW San Diego Local 13
http://newindicator.org/?page_id=1422

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Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2019 21:08:54 +0000 (UTC)
From: National Union of Healthcare Workers <info at nuhw.org>
Subject: Statewide Kaiser mental health strike set to begin Dec. 16
 
 
Dear Friend:
Kaiser Permanente’s 4,000 psychologists, therapists, social workers and other healthcare professionals are going on strike for five days starting Monday, Dec. 16 at more than 100 medical facilities across California.
This statewide strike to achieve parity for mental health patients and providers at Kaiser was originally scheduled for last month. But clinicians postponed it in the wake of Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson’s sudden passing. 
Our members, who have been working without a contract for more than a year, were hopeful that Kaiser executives — including the top doctors with the for-profit Permanente Medical Groups — would seek out compromises to avert a strike. But Kaiser’s contract proposal would continue to leave clinicians struggling with unsustainable caseloads, while forcing  them to accept significantly poorer retirement and health benefits than more than 120,000 other Kaiser employees in California who settled contracts recently.
Kaiser’s mental health system is in full-blown crisis, and Kaiser’s contract proposal would only entrench mental health as the stepchild of the Kaiser system. Clinics remain understaffed, patients are now frequently waiting six-to-eight weeks for appointments, and clinicians are completely booked out for more than a month and working after hours to try to help patients who can’t wait for care.
Kaiser says it’s hiring more clinicians, but how will it be able to recruit and retain them when it insists on singling them out for poorer benefits? Here is what clinicians are proposing to help fix Kaiser’s broken mental health care services:
Allowing therapists to immediately begin scheduling more return appointments in order to reduce their patients’ often dangerously long appointment wait times for conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. In a survey conducted earlier this year, 77% of Kaiser’s clinicians reported that on a daily basis, they must schedule their patients’ return appointments further into the future than is clinically appropriate. 
 
Providing sufficient time to perform vital patient care duties such as charting their patients clinical encounters, communicating with social service agencies and calling back patients who are suffering, but can’t get appointments. Currently, clinicians are burning out and leaving Kaiser because their schedules are so overbooked, they must do many of these tasks after hours.
 
Establishing adequate crisis services in every service area. Too often patients are unnecessarily hospitalized because they can’t get walk-in services at Kaiser’s mental health clinics. Furthermore, this proposal would avoid clinicians having to cancel appointments with patients who have waited months to be seen in order to treat patients in crisis.
Clinicians are also proposing that Kaiser restore pensions that it unilaterally rescinded four years ago for newly hired mental health clinicians in Southern California, but which remain in place for nearly all other Kaiser employees.
As you can see here that Kaiser has since settled contracts with 19 unions representing 121,091 employees in California without taking away pension benefits for new hires.
Kaiser mental health clinicians have gone on strike before, and they will keep fighting until Kaiser agrees to finally prioritize mental health care. 
Please support support them on the picket line and let the top doctors at the Permanente Medical Groups know that you support our proposals for mental health clinicians to have enough time in their schedules to provide quality patient care as well as the same health and retirement benefits as nearly every other Kaiser employee.
Permanente Medical Group (Northern California)
Richard Isaacs, MD - CEO
Richard.Isaacs at kp.org 
(916) 952-1934 (cell)
Southern Permanente Medical Group
Edward Ellison, MD - CEO
Edward.M.Ellison at kp.org 
(714) 319-9478 (cell)
In Unity,
Sal Rosselli, President
National Union of Healthcare Workers
 
 
National Union of Healthcare Workers · 5801 Christie Ave, Suite 525, Emeryville, CA 94608, United States 


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