SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A 10-week strike by Kaiser Permanente mental healthcare providers could come to an end this week after the union representing them and Kaiser Permanente arrived at a tentative agreement Tuesday.
Mental healthcare providers in Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region have been on strike since Aug. 15.
In a statement, Kaiser Permanente told ABC10 they and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) reached the agreement early Tuesday morning.
“The new 4-year agreement will benefit Kaiser Permanente patients and drive collaborative efforts aimed at improving access to mental health care, while at the same time recognizing and better supporting mental health therapists in their important work,” Kaiser Permanente said.
Kaiser and the union say the nearly 2,000 Kaiser Permanente therapists represented by NUHW will vote on the agreement over the course of two days, starting Tuesday evening, “after which more details about the agreement will be available.”
“NUHW and Kaiser Permanente wish to thank Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg for mediating and helping to bring negotiations to a close,” Kaiser Permanente and NUHW told ABC10.
ABC10 asked both sides what changed in negotiations allowing them to come to an agreement. As of the publishing of this story, ABC10 is still waiting to hear back on that.
RELATED: Kaiser Permanente mental healthcare provider strike enters week 9 | What's at the heart of it?
The National Union of Healthcare Workers represents approximately 2,000 psychologists, social workers, therapists, and chemical dependency counselors in Kaiser's Northern California region, which includes the Sacramento area, Central Valley, and Bay Area.
In previous stories, NUHW members told ABC10 it’s not about the money but about the time Kaiser Permanente gives them to provide quality care to patients.
They’ve been demanding three main things they say will lead to better patient care:
• A caseload cap. Currently, they say, there’s no limit on how many patients a provider can have at one time, and the union calls caseloads “unmanageable.”
• More ‘returning patient’ appointments and fewer ‘new patient’ appointments, to have more availability for existing patients
• And more time for ‘Indirect Patient Care,' the time a provider spends outside of seeing patients.
Jenny Butera is a general outpatient therapist for the adult psychiatry department. ABC10 spoke with her on the strike line last week.
“Indirect care is actually tasks that we need to do to provide for the patient,” Butera said. “Oftentimes, that might be calling the sheriff for a welfare check, doing a 5150 on a suicidal patient, contacting CPS for reporting a child abuse case. So a lot of things that are only possible if you're licensed therapist, and it's not just charting - but that is part of it, too.”
Indirect Patient Care Time also includes replying to patient emails and creating treatment plans, an NUHW spokesperson said.
Kaiser Permanente said in previous coverage they’d met the NUHW halfway at the bargaining table on Indirect Patient Care Time, only to have their offers rejected.
Also at the heart of this has been a law called SB221, which went into effect on July 1 of this year. It aims to strengthen Californians’ timely access to mental healthcare by requiring healthcare service plans – including Kaiser Permanente – and health insurers to provide follow-up mental health and substance use disorder therapy appointments within 10 business days unless the therapist decides the patient can wait longer.
“Not all patients need that time or need that frequent of a session, but many do, and we just can’t get them in,” Butera said. “Some therapists have some availability in four weeks. I certainly don't. My earliest is typically six- to eight weeks out.”
The union claims Kaiser is violating SB221, especially with hundreds of providers still out on strike.
Responding to that claim earlier this month, Kaiser Permanente told ABC10, “The new law aligns with Kaiser Permanente’s long-standing commitment to provide timely, high-quality mental health care and substance use disorder treatment to our members. The implementation of SB 221 is challenging for all health plans and providers, not just Kaiser Permanente, given the overall demand for mental health care and substance use disorder services and the documented shortage of trained professionals both nationally and in California. Implementation of (SB) 221 to Kaiser Permanente’s model of mental health and addiction care and services is well underway.”
WATCH MORE ON ABC10: Kaiser Strike enters week 9, mental health patients weigh in
