Or as the Sacramento Bee put it, nearly a year ago...
Dec 20, 2018 - Kaiser Foundation Health Plan recently settled a 2014 class-action lawsuit stemming from two allegations that it dumped patients with severe mental illness. ...
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after several thousand KP behavioral health workers, and nurses in union solidarity, walked out of their jobs starting Dec. 10 to launch a rolling five-day strike across the state for better access and care for their patients.
For all their patients needing mental healthcare.
Not for the first time in this decade. Despite the California Department of Managed Health Care repeated findings that patients were having trouble accessing care, among other service and workplace violations for which KP has been fined in the millions. And despite that KP and the unions reached an agreement in July 2017 to correct these types of violations with help of an outside consultant.
Healthcare workers reported for years upon years being told that KP can’t afford the costs of rectifying understaffing and other factors issues limiting patient access to timely care, even while KP profits were running in the billions. And in contradiction to how KP portrays in public promotion and to KP “members” the quality and availability of mental healthcare, among all their other services.
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan recently settled a 2014 class-action lawsuit stemming from two allegations that it dumped patients with severe mental illness.
Plaintiffs ... alleged that in separate incidents, [KP] psychiatrists told them their sons needed [treatment in county-run] locked residential [emphasis added re: topmost blockquote] facilities called IMDs (institutions for mental disease) [and that they had to] remove their children from their Kaiser health plans ... [for those transfers to happen] — a change that shifted the costs of treatment from Kaiser to government-funded programs such as Medi-Cal.
Despite the settlement, Kaiser said in a statement it continues to dispute some of the [allegations]...
Under terms of the settlement, finalized in December, Kaiser has agreed to inform other patients who may have similar circumstances [ibid.] that they can re-enroll in their Kaiser health plans. Kaiser will also pay the two plaintiffs $10,000 each and reimburse up to $1.2 million in attorneys’ fees. It was not immediately known how many other patients could be in the affected class.
A notice authorized by the Los Angeles County Superior Court sent out in June states in part that: “(Kaiser) will be issuing notices to mental health physicians, therapists, social workers, discharge planners, and case managers regarding coverage of locked residential psychiatric facilities and how Kaiser members in LPS (Lanterman–Petris–Short) conservatorships should be transferred to these facilities.”...
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At the time, The National Union of Healthcare Workers President Sal Rosselli said in a prepared press release:
“This settlement validates what thousands of Kaiser mental health clinicians were saying last week [and for years] on picket lines across California: Kaiser is illegally denying patients appropriate mental health care, and it must work with clinicians to fix the problem,”
And now KP finally gets around to telling ‘members’ of a legal settlement that may affect their mental health services.
Well, telling’em when patients finally get into the depths of that Matryoshka of a link-sequence about an aspect of services potentially needed by one in every 5 to 6 of them. Whether it’s comprehensible is another matter of course.
Byzantine might be the word for it.
SEE EARLIER KP DIARIES AT THE TAG. For a few dozen linked news reports and documents on KP conduct going back a dozen years or more, see this diary, at the foot.