“Kaiser executives say they’re not using AI to make patient care determinations, but they won’t say what technology is underpinning the online questionnaires that automatically determine whether patients require urgent appointments and assess whether they may be a threat to themselves,” said Carolyn Staehle, a behavioral therapist in San Francisco. “Whatever Kaiser wants to call it, it’s not a human being making these potentially life-and-death decisions, and it’s not the same level of care as being assessed by a licensed therapist.”
Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest health maintenance organization (HMO), is forcing its therapists onto the streets in the ongoing battle to win parity for mental health care workers, in relation to traditional medical providers, in its services to twelve million members — also now confronting the challenge of artificial intelligence.
The 2,400 striking mental health care workers are members of the National Union of Health Care Workers (NUHW). They walked out on Wednesday, March 18, in a “practice” strike that is most likely a taste of what’s to come. In 2022, these workers struck for ten weeks, the longest mental health care workers’ strike on record. Two issues dominated negotiations from the start: workloads for Kaiser therapists and wait times for Kaiser patients. The strikers won on both, forcing concessions until then all but unheard of. They won breakthrough provisions to retain staff and reduce wait times for patients, with plans to collaborate on transforming Kaiser’s model for providing mental health care.
It’s inevitable that the current contract fight will be just as tough. But the NUHW members are battle-tested; each contract fight with Kaiser so far has included a strike. And this time, the NUHW members were joined in a sympathy strike by thousands of registered nurses who shared their concerns about Kaiser’s increasing use of artificial intelligence to the detriment of patient…
Auteur: Cal Winslow
