A majority of San Diego County supervisors supported a resolution Wednesday that decries reduced “patient management time” for mental health care providers who work for Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, despite insistence from managers of the health care giant that San Diego County is not affected.
On a 3-2 vote, with Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond in opposition, the board majority approved a resolution that opposes alleged changes to Kaiser’s administrative rules, which, according to a county board letter, have “cut patient management time in half from four hours to as little as two hours per week.” Management time is used to handle the administrative aspects of mental health care from responding to emails and voicemails to writing treatment plans and updating medical charts.
Put on the agenda by Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer and Monica Montgomery Steppe, the resolution has no regulatory power, but is rather a statement, which carries additional weight given that more than 11,000 county workers have Kaiser coverage.
Several members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers spoke on behalf of the resolution Wednesday with representative Izeah Chairez saying that supervisors in Orange and Los Angeles counties have already passed similar resolutions.
He and others labor organizers said that therapists are struggling to keep up with their work given reduced time to do administrative tasks.
“Elected leaders have stood with UNHW Kaiser therapists because it’s clear that they deserve to work in a place where they are not squeezed for every ounce of their productivity and then left in a state of burnout,” Chairez said.
But Kaiser executive Dawn Gillam called the resolution inaccurate, saying that patient management time was standardized across Southern California in 2023.
“The standardization resulted in no change to the (patient management time) that was already in practice in San Diego,” Gillam said. “We have struck a good balance between direct patient care and (patient management time) that supports our therapists and advances our shared goal of providing high-quality accessible services to all of our members.”
The executive added that Kaiser has recently hired 250 additional therapists in Southern California and has “contracted with several hundred external therapists, resulting in reduced caseload.”
But those statements were not enough to sway a majority of board members.
Lawson-Remer said she switched away from Kaiser because she “could not get a therapist,” and seemed to suggest that the resolution was about sending a message in support of overworked therapists.
“In the very big picture, we are not solving our crisis of mental health in our county or in our country,” Lawson-Remer said. “If we’re burning out providers, if they are so overworked and overtaxed in trying to provide patient care (that) they can’t do a good job with the patients that they do have, they eventually burn out and leave.”
But Desmond said he views the sudden dust-up around administrative time for mental health workers as a possible union negotiating tactic.
Desmond said he suspects that contract negotiations between Kaiser and the union underpin the resolution rhetoric.
“I don’t think we should be part of this; this is part of overall negotiations (and) I can’t support this with the information we have today,” Desmond said.
