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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Large HMO Cited in Mental Health Care Cover-up

Nancy A. Melville
Medscape Medical News
Apr 03, 2013

California's Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has cited Kaiser Permanente for using a deceptive dual record-keeping system to cover up violations of the state's "timely access" law, which restricts the amount of time mental health patients should have to wait for an appointment, as well as for other violations.

In a report filed last month, the DMHC concludes that many Kaiser mental health patients faced extensive waiting periods for appointments, well beyond the 10 days for a regular appointment that the law requires.

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Clinician Whistle-blowers

The violations were discovered through a standard survey or evaluation process that the DMHC uses to review compliance by all California health plans.

After the review was underway, complaints regarding timely access violations were brought forward by a group of Kaiser Permanente's own mental health clinicians, who were represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). Those complaints were considered and incorporated in the evaluation, Rouillard said.

Among the psychologists lodging complaints was Andris Skuja, PhD, who said the violations had been observed for years before the clinicians referred their concerns to the DMHC.

"Over a number of years, we tried many internal mechanisms with Kaiser to address some mounting concerns we had about the adequacy of treatment," Dr. Skuja told Medscape Medical News.

The entire story is here.

A previous news story about this topic can be found here.