March 14th, 2024
NUHW investigation sparks complaint against Kaiser
In recent years, it’s become clear that Kaiser Permanente treats its mental health clinicians and patients worse in Southern California than in Northern California. Despite Kaiser’s chronic understaffing and documented parity violations, its Southern California management team has insisted on paying clinicians lower salaries with poorer benefits, while illegally cutting Patient Management Time and refusing […]
March 14th, 2024
NUHW is sponsoring two mental health equity bills
NUHW is helping make 2024 a monumental year in the fight for mental health equity. In January, we worked with allies in the State Assembly to pass Assembly Bill 236, authored by Chris Holden, that would put an end to Ghost Networks by requiring health plans to maintain accurate lists of in-network providers. Now, NUHW […]
March 14th, 2024
RNs make Kaiser address failed call center rollout
When Kaiser introduced a regional call center that left psychiatric nurses inundated with messages and patients potentially waiting too long for care, the nurses successfully organized to demand improvements. Until last summer, Kaiser had local call centers for psychiatric nurses that operated well. But in a bid to save money through consolidation, Kaiser rolled out […]
March 14th, 2024
Model of Care committees further NorCal contract wins
The five Model of Care Committees in Northern California completed their work recently with strong gains for clinicians and overall patient care. Among the biggest victories are more Indirect Patient Care Time/Patient Management Time for intake clinicians, more time to conduct child intakes, more treatment tracks to ease the burden of generalists and crisis care […]
March 14th, 2024
Q&A with Sandra Leal-Lopez, LMFT
This page is also available in: Español Sandra Leal-Lopez, LMFT, is a steward and former Bargaining Team member at Kaiser’s Panorama City clinic in Southern California. When Kaiser moved to cut Patient Management Time, known in Northern California as Indirect Patient Care Time, Sandra and her colleagues fought back. In this interview, edited […]