Note: Viewing some of these stories may require a subscription.
NUHW researcher Fred Seavey was quoted in a Capital and Main story about how Kaiser Permanente and the state have yet to agree on an action plan after they reached a $200 million settlement to correct the healthcare giant’s abysmal performance in providing mental and behavioral health care to its patients. The settlement required Kaiser to hire a third-party consultant to help it put together a program to address severe shortcomings in its delivery of mental health services, a problem for which the giant company has been cited repeatedly by the Department of Managed Health Care for more than a decade. “Our state’s largest health care provider, 9 million enrollees, is violating multiple laws and they don’t even have a corrective action plan in place after 10 months,” Seavey said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have delayed earthquake safety standards for hospitals. Becker’s Hospital Review says that SB 1432 would have allowed hospitals to apply to the state for a five-year extension of the 2030 seismic compliance deadline, with a new deadline of 2035. The 2030 deadline follows the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which led to stricter earthquake-resistance standards. By 2030, all hospital buildings in California must be able to remain fully operational after an earthquake. The California Hospital Association, which sought to delay the standards, expressed disappointment with the governor’s veto.
Media in Humboldt County, including Kym Kemp, MSN, and Lost Coast Outpost reported on our news release questioning Providence’s motives in closing the only in-patient acute rehabilitation center in the county.
The North Bay Business Journal, Hospice News, and Becker’s Hospital Review covered an agreement our Sonoma hospice members reached with Providence to settle a ULP.
CalMatters reported on the impending closure of USC Verdugo Hills Hospital’s birthing center. The news outlet has been chronicling the closure of maternity wards throughout the state. In total, according to CalMatters’ analysis of state records, 56 hospitals have stopped delivering babies since 2012 — that’s 16% of all general acute care hospitals in the state. Black, Latino and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by these closures even as they grapple with some of the state’s worst birth outcomes.
The Biden administration announced it would finalize a highly anticipated proposal meant to force health insurers to cover mental health care on the same basis as physical health conditions. According to Stat News, the administration said the new rules will compel insurers to act on analyses they were already required to conduct to ensure they were covering mental health conditions on par with others. The rule prohibits plans from using more restrictive prior authorization for mental health than for physical health conditions. It also closes loopholes that exempted insurance plans sponsored by state and local governments from its requirements.
In a letter to the editor in the local Humboldt County online news outlet, a former St. Joseph’s Acute Rehab Unit patient advocates for Providence keeping the much needed Eureka facility open. “Outsourcing rehabilitation services to Brius, which has long been known for shoddy care, neglect of patients, and fleecing taxpayers’ Medicare dollars for services never delivered, is not a responsible option,” writes Fran Ransley, who notes that the “illogic” of Providence’s decision has been pointed out by NUHW, which has spoken against the closure.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that new research from University of Southern California health economists finds that Sutter Health began implementing anti-competitive contracting practices in the early 2000s, after which it charged 30 percent more than other comparable hospitals. The change happened after Sutter adopted an “all or nothing” practice in which a large health system that owns virtually all the hospitals in a region can compel insurers to contract with all its hospitals or none at all. The findings echo some of the claims in recent lawsuits accusing the health care giant of abusing its market power to charge insurers and consumers higher prices for medical care.
Skilled Nursing News reported that Kaiser Permanente announced the permanent closure of its last nursing home in California, resulting in 249 job losses across various roles. The job cuts involve administrators, physical therapists, dietitians, licensed vocational nurses, and certified nursing assistants. The decision to shut down the facility located in San Leandro by mid-November follows a gradual decline in patient numbers over the last 11 years, Kaiser said in a statement.
