Southern California mental health patients speak out during health care worker strike

SAN DIEGO (CN) — For months, mental health care provider Yesmine Florines struggled through to get mental health treatment at a Kaiser facility in Southern California for herself for postpartum depression and suicidality.

“It’s very difficult because I feel like I’m playing the runaround for eight, nine, now going on 13 months where I have not been able to get a regular provider,” she said Monday during a press conference on Zoom of mental health care patients at Kaiser Permanente facilities in Southern California.

The conference was organized by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents Southern California mental health care workers who have been on strike since late October. Strikers have asked Kaiser for better pay and benefits, along with more staffing to ease workloads, which they say have not only overworked therapists and other workers — leading people to leave the job because of burnout — but left patients feeling like they’re not being cared for adequality.

After months of being told to call a crisis line for help, being offered therapy once a month because in-house Kaiser therapists were overbooked and even a failed attempt to reach out to a therapist herself, the only time Florines said she was able to see a therapist regularly was when Kaiser brought fill-in mental health workers outside of the company when staff went on strike.

“But she’s not with Kaiser,” Florines said about a couple’s counselor she’s seen once a week since the beginning of the strike. “She’s not my therapist,” she added about a case manager.

Still, she’s unable to see more specialized therapists.

“There was no continuum of care, and it’s been very, very frustrating,” she said.

Ezekiel Koontz, a non-binary teacher in need of gender affirming care, said that after they tried to commit suicide, they tried to get an appointment to see a therapist, but they were “hot potato-ed,” between 10 different therapists.

“It seems like Kaiser doesn’t give a crap about their patients when they’re getting the money, and so frankly, I don’t really have much ability here as the patient, as the schmuck giving them my money, so all I can really say is, when I die, bury me on the steps of the Ordway Building,” Koontz said, referring to Kaiser’s headquarters in Oakland.

Kaiser maintains that members have been properly getting the care they need, even through the strike.

“We are now starting the 10th week of an unnecessary strike called by NUHW. Our patients are receiving timely access to mental health care and services through an extensive, high-quality network of 13,000 therapists across Southern California. Additionally, more than 45% of our therapists have returned to work and are caring for our patients and members,” wrote Candice H. Lee, a communications manager for Kaiser, in a press release.

Kaiser has contacted every member who had an appointment affected by the strike, Lee added, but some patients have chosen to wait for their therapist until the strike ends.

“We are encouraging these patients to schedule an appointment, rather than delay their care. Members identified as higher risk are discouraged from postponing care and are regularly monitored by our clinical team,” Lee said.

Sal Rosselli, NUHW’s president emeritus, said that Kaiser offered to begin bargaining sessions in the new year starting on January 9.

In the meantime, Jeremy Simpkin, a licensed marriage and family therapist and case manager for Kaiser, said that all gender and postpartum care has been on hold since the strike started.

“Kaiser’s system, particularly in Southern California, fails patients because it is woefully understaffed and because Kaiser continues to intentionally reduce the amount of care patients receive,” Simpkin said.

Overbooked and understaffed, therapists in Southern California Kaiser facilities don’t have enough time to get their work done and make sure their patients are getting the best care they can get, Simpkins said. As staff begin to burn out from overwork, they leave the job, increasing wait times for patients, he added.

It’s not impossible for Kaiser to fix these problems, Simpkin said, since NUHW workers in Northern California won similar concessions from the company in a 10-week strike in 2022.

“This strike is emotionally hard for me, I think you can hear it in my voice. I know patients are really struggling and I know it takes a long time to establish rapport with a therapist. At the same time I know if I do nothing, mental health care at Kaiser will continue to get worse. When we presented these concerns to Kaiser they said ‘it works for us,’” he said.