For the past 12 weeks, mental health care professionals who work for Kaiser have been on strike in Clairemont Mesa, right in front of Kaiser's San Diego Medical Center, demanding changes to their contract.
“I’m not trying to fight Kaiser, I just want Kaiser to do the right thing if it was one person I’d be like come on do the right thing.,” says Josh Garcia.
Garcia has worked as a licensed therapist for Kaiser for the past 10 years.
While he loves his job, he believes more needs to be done to help mental health professionals do their jobs well, specifically when it comes to cutting down patient appointment wait times to see a therapist.
Garcia adds, “There was a time in the past where as a therapist I had a 2 and a half months.
Ethically, I worried about patient care.”
He also wants therapists to have work time built into their schedules, which he says Northern California Kaisers already have.
Garcia says, " We might have 40 patients a week and 40 hours of direct patient care. we used to have 4 hours a week where we could do paperwork, call CPS, call patients' family members, be proactive. Now we have zero patient care time. It’s hard for patients but it’s also hard for us. It’s leading to burnout.”
Garcia is one of many Union Members who hasn’t been working since the strike started 3 months ago.
Instead he’s been carrying signs pushing for change.
ABC 10News reached out to Kaiser about these concerns, and we were given this statement which reads in part.
“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.”
It goes on to say the Union continues to “demand that we settle a contract agreement so Therapists would spend 50% or their time in non-patient care. This is not logical and would result in 15,000 clinical appointments per month not being staffed.”
Garcia says the Union and Kaiser are expected to meet next week, and he’s hoping progress will be made to satisfy both sides.
He says, “Let’s just get this over with it doesn’t have to be this way we’re taking a lot of time from patients and therapist let’s just get it done with.”
