News of the Month — April 2019
Several outlets including Beckers reported on our advertising campaign against Kaiser in Washington, D.C.
A bankruptcy judge last week approved the $610 million sale of four hospitals, including two in San Mateo County, that are owned by the bankrupt nonprofit Verity Health System. The San Jose Mercury News reported that Seton Medical Center in Daly City and Seton Coastside in Moss Beach, as well as the St. Francis and St. Vincent medical centers in Los Angeles County, will be sold to Southern California-based The KPC Group.
The San Francisco Chronicle, KALW and KRCB covered the gathering by Kaiser mental health patients. Beckers wrote an advance story.
The Baltimore Sun reported that health insurer Kaiser Permanente also paid Mayor Catherine Pugh more than $100,000 to purchase copies of her books from 2015 to 2018. In September 2017, the city’s spending board, which Pugh sits on and controls, awarded Kaiser a $48 million contract to provide health insurance to city employees from 2018 through 2020, with options to renew. After The Sun reported the Kaiser purchase, the Republican governor sent a letter to the office of the state prosecutor to begin a criminal investigation of the allegations against Pugh.
Homeless patients made about 100,000 visits to California hospitals in 2017, marking a 28% rise from two years earlier, according to Kaiser Health News. More than a third of those visits involved a diagnosis of mental illness, according to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. By contrast, 6% of all hospital discharges in California during that time involved a mental health diagnosis.