Tragedy Stains SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Barbara Ragan's husband (from Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

Here's a breaking story that leaves a tragic and disgraceful stain on Dave Regan's name.

Readers may recall that in December, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan shamelessly pimped for Kaiser Permanente by pairing up with Kaiser’s top executives, including John Nelson, to deny a variety of well-documented problems affecting thousands of Kaiser’s mental health patients.

Regan famously told Modern Healthcare that Kaiser's mental health staffing violations had been "completely solved." (Of course, Regan forgot to tell the journalist he has no clue about these issues because his union doesn't represent Kaiser’s mental health clinicians.)

Regan’s denials came just three months after Kaiser paid a $4 million fine for "systematically" understaffing its mental health clinics, falsifying patients' appointment records, and forcing patients to wait weeks and months for the treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, and other conditions.

Fast forward to last weekend.

On Saturday, a California newspaper reported the latest suicide of a patient experiencing lengthy appointment delays at Kaiser. The victim was a former member of Regan's own union, SEIU-UHW. She spent 16 years working in the Medical Records Department at a Kaiser South San Francisco Medical Center.

In case that’s not enough, the suicide victim's last name offers a not-so-settle reminder of Dave Regan's shameful denials of mental health patients' struggles to get care at Kaiser. Her last name is "Ragan" -- pronounced identically to "Regan."

According to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Barbara Ragan struggled for years with depression and recently sought care from Kaiser's ER after her depression grew worse. On a recent Sunday morning -- in the middle of her two-month wait for a Kaiser psychiatry appointment -- Ms. Ragan drove herself to Kaiser Santa Rosa Medical Center, drove to the top of the Kaiser parking structure, and with her Kaiser card in her hand, jumped to her death.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat quotes her husband as saying the following:

“She drove right over to Kaiser … 16 years working there … she was very upset about them. She went right up to the parking area near the emergency room,” he said. “To me, that’s a statement of what they’re doing out there, how they treat people.”

A member of Sonoma County's Board of Supervisors -- whose own husband committed suicide while waiting 42 days for a Kaiser appointment to treat his depression -- also criticized Kaiser and contradicted Regan's shameful statements. According to the article:

[Sup.] Shirlee Zane disputes assertions that Kaiser has since greatly improved its mental health services.

“Clearly that was not Barbara Ragan’s experience,” Zane said. “She didn’t get what she was seeking; neither did her husband or her children.”

Zane has publicly stated that Kaiser’s lack of mental health services played a role in her husband’s 2011 suicide. She said the HMO’s ongoing problems with access to therapists continue to endanger the lives of those suffering severe mental health issues.

"How many more wake-up calls do they need?” she said. “They have completely and utterly made these public statements that they have improved their services.”

Zane said Kaiser is “exactly where they were two-and-a-half years ago” when the DMHC issued a scathing report criticizing the health plan’s mental health services.

Saturday's article also quotes NUHW’s Sal Rosselli:

“This tragic situation is the inevitable cost of a system run by accountants rather than caregivers,” Rosselli said. “How many people have to die before Kaiser listens to the clinicians they hired to fix the problem?”

What did Dave Regan say to the press?    

Silence.

Here's a link to the full article in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat: "Kaiser Permanente Faces Renewed Criticism over Mental Health Services after Santa Rosa Suicide."

Tasty sends his heartfelt thoughts and condolences to Barbara’s family and friends.

Who Butters Dave Regan's Buiscuits?

John Nelson, Kaiser's VP of Public Relations

Today, SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan suffered a smackdown that leaves little doubt about who butters his biscuits.

Two months ago, as 3,500 Kaiser employees prepared for a weeklong strike to protest the understaffing of Kaiser's mental health clinics across California, Regan took the unprecedented step of teaming up with John Nelson (Kaiser Permanente's Vice President of Public Relations and Communications) to launch a coordinated P.R. attack against the workers.

An article in "Modern Healthcare" featured matching quotes from Regan and Nelson dismissing clinicians’ claims about the understaffing. 

Members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers are accusing healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente of understaffing its mental-health services, and they're threatening to strike if their issues aren't resolved… But Dave Regan, president of the SEIU-UHW, which represents 45,000 Kaiser employees across the state, dismissed NUHW's concerns, saying that the staffing problem “was a limited one and is completely solved.” (Modern Healthcare, “Kaiser Mental-Health Staffing under Fire Again,” December 4, 2014)

 “Completely solved."

Hmmmm.

This morning, government investigators released a 33-page report detailing the results of their months-long investigation into Kaiser's mental health services. They cited Kaiser for multiple violations of state law, including understaffing its mental health clinics and forcing patients to endure lengthy, illegal waits for care. Investigators are contemplating additional fines against Kaiser – that’s on top of the $4 million fine that Kaiser already paid last September.

 

Dave Regan, SEIU-UHW

In an article published today by the Los Angeles Times, Shelley Rouillard (the Director of California’s Department of Managed Health Care) directly refuted Regan's earlier statement:

For the second time in two years, California regulators have faulted HMO giant Kaiser Permanente for causing mental health patients to endure long delays to get treatment… In Northern California, patients didn’t get initial or follow-up appointments within the required time frame of 10 to 15 business days in 22% of the records reviewed… “That is not a good performance,” Rouillard said. “Fundamentally it comes down to there are not enough providers in the Kaiser system to serve everyone who needs mental health services." (Los Angeles Times, “State again faults Kaiser Permanente for mental health treatment delays,” February 24, 2015)

So… Regan not only pimps for the Boss, he knowingly lies for the Boss, and gladly throws patients and healthcare workers under the bus. 

Hmmm. 

If you're a member of SEIU-UHW, wouldn't that make you a bit nervous?

Kaiser Permanente Blows Smoke; NUHW Lands Body Blow

Remember the saying, “It's not the size of the union in the fight, but the size of the fight in the union”?

Well, on Monday, 4,000 of NUHW’s members launched a week-long strike against Kaiser Permanente across California to protest the HMO's chronic understaffing of its mental health services and the horrible impact on patients, including tragic suicides.

The strike -- which NUHW says is the largest strike by mental health professionals in the nation-- is quite remarkable.

NUHW’s members are giving the U.S.'s biggest HMO a run for the money… and have already left their multi-billion-dollar employer with a black eye and a bloody nose!

In response to workers’ strike, media outlets have published more than a thousand stories about Kaiser's underfunded and failed mental health services. Three elected officials have stepped forward with accounts about how their family members committed suicide after Kaiser delayed their access to mental health care.

Kaiser, now playing defense, is running daily full-page ads in newspapers across the state along with a steady flow of radio ads in a desperate effort to repair the damage.

So why has Kaiser blundered so badly?

According to observers, Kaiser's fatcat executives decided to ignore the well-documented problems affecting their mental health services and instead proceeded to carefully insert their heads even deeper inside the posterior end of their gastrointestinal tracts.

Kaiser's John Nelson

One of Kaiser's chief idiots is John Nelson, the Vice President of Brand Management. 

Before joining Kaiser, Nelson worked as "a strategic communications professional” for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the utility that was fined $1.4 billion for killing 8 people and blowing up multiple city blocks in a firestorm that resulted from PGE’s greedy refusal to fix its leaky, underground natural gas pipes.

Nelson, like a rabid "climate denier," loves to issue vociferous denials of any criticism of Kaiser's mental health services... even though, just four months ago, Kaiser paid a $4 million fine to state regulators for multiple mental health violations, including imposing lengthy illegal appointment delays on patients and falsifying appointment records by employing a parallel set of books.

Last month, SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan delivered one of his more pathetic performances by working hand in hand with Nelson to spout Kaiser's corporate talking points against Kaiser's patients and workers. 

Yesterday, an award-winning columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle penned a piece that sent Nelson's head spinning. It turns out the columnist, Jon Carroll, is a Kaiser member and has personally had problems with the HMO's mental health care. Carroll skillfully clowned Kaiser for its dishonest media campaign by publishing a column entitled: "This Just In: Patients Know Stuff Too."

Carroll writes:

...some of us are not ordinary outsiders -- some of us are Kaiser members. We watch the bureaucracy yawn and shift. We understand the virtues and hate the flaws. And here's a true thing: Kaiser mental healthcare facilities are really not very good.

He goes on to describe his own experiences at Kaiser and then launches a frontal assault on Nelson’s bald-faced lies:

So Kaiser can throw around as much smoke as it can find. It already paid a fine for its scheduling practices. The paucity of its mental health services is pretty well known locally. If it's going to consciously gut the programs, it should just say so and move on. But it can't pretend that black is white.

Ouch!

For more info, here's a link to photos and news coverage of the strike on NUHW’s website.

SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan: "I'm Kaiser's bitch” (Part 2)

Dave Regan's latest act of pimpery shows us he'll pretty much do anything that Kaiser Permanente’s execs ask of him.

Here's what happened:

Kaiser's execs are under fire for the HMO's deepening mental health crisis.

In September, Kaiser agreed to pay a $4 million government fine for short-staffing its mental health clinics and forcing patients to wait weeks and even months for basic care. Among multiple violations of patient care laws, Kaiser admitted to maintaining a parallel set of paper waiting lists that hid patients' massive appointment wait times -- just like at the VA hospitals. Today, Kaiser is operating under a government-issued "Cease and Desist Order."

Also in September, a U.S. Congressperson held a community forum where Kaiser was blasted by patients for its mental health failures. One of the forum's sponsors was an elected county official whose husband, a Kaiser patient, tragically took his own life while waiting 42 days for a mental health appointment despite his serious condition.

In October, Kaiser’s patients filed a fourth class action lawsuit against the giant HMO, this one alleging that Kaiser is illegally dumping patients with severe mental illness onto counties. Three other lawsuits allege that Kaiser’s appointment delays are directly connected to suicides by Kaiser patients.

And just two weeks ago, Kaiser's 2,500 mental health clinicians -- who are members of NUHW -- announced they’ve authorized a statewide strike to protest Kaiser's short staffing and its undertreatment of patients.

It's no surprise, then, that Kaiser's PR officials are sweating bullets as they stare at their computer screens and try to dream up ways to escape this PR nightmare. Then one day, however, one of them had a brilliant idea. “Let's call Dave Regan. He'll say anything."

That's how Dave Regan ended up being quoted, alongside Kaiser's chief PR hack John Nelson, in a Modern Healthcare article published last week (see below). In the article, Regan announces that there's no staffing problem at Kaiser's mental health clinics! Way to go, Dave!

Regan, of course, forgot to tell the journalist that his union doesn't represent any of Kaiser's mental health workers. Whoops!

Here's an excerpt from a comment below the Modern Healthcare article:

Neither Regan nor Nelson are as qualified to comment on the limitations of Kaiser’s mental health services as its clinicians who must wait as long as three months to see their patients for treatment appointments.

Question: What sort of labor leader shills for management? Answer: the Dave Regan sort. Regan does not represent Kaiser's mental health professionals. In 2010, fed up with his betrayal of our benefits, I and 2500 of my colleagues voted overwhelmingly to quit SEIU and join NUHW. Compromised and unqualified, he has no standing to speak comment on the deficiencies plaguing Kaiser mental health.

And here's a cartoon created in response to Regan's quote:

Dave Regan:  "for sale to the highest bidder" ...and willing to throw patients under the bus to advance his personal interest.

Modern Healthcare

Kaiser mental-health staffing under fire again

By Adam Rubenfire   December 4, 2014

Members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers are accusing healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente of understaffing its mental-health services, and they're threatening to strike if their issues aren't resolved. Kaiser has responded that patients with urgent needs can be seen immediately, and it accuses the union in turn of sullying the system's reputation for its own organizing purposes.

The NUHW, founded in 2009 when it split from the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, says patients are waiting too long for appointments because there aren't enough mental-health staffers to meet demand. NUHW members, who represent about 2,500 of Kaiser's mental-health workers in California, voted in November to strike if the system doesn't make improvements.

But Dave Regan, president of the SEIU-UHW, which represents 45,000 Kaiser employees across the state, dismissed NUHW's concerns, saying that the staffing problem “was a limited one and is completely solved.”

However, this isn't the first time Kaiser has been accused of poor psychiatric care. The provider was fined $4 million by the California Department of Managed Health Care in 2013 for failing to provide timely care for its mental-health patients.

The agency also said that Kaiser's marketing materials detailing its mental-health services were confusing and unlawful, including an FAQ sheet informing patients that long-term psychotherapy was unavailable at Kaiser facilities, and would not be covered by Kaiser insurance. This statement and others were found to be in violation of the state's mental-health parity law, which requires mental illnesses to be covered and treated in the same manner as physical illnesses.

Kaiser contested the penalty but ultimately agreed to pay it... (full article)

Kaiser Exec: John August "is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee"

Here’s an interesting article about John August’s sudden exit from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (aka, “the partnership unions”).

In case it wasn’t crystal clear, the article offers more evidence that Kaiser’s execs are the puppet masters who control the partnership unions with every twist and turn of their fingers.

In the article, August’s departure is confirmed not by union officials… but by Kaiser! Ordinarily, the Boss isn’t the formal press source for internal union leadership changes, right?  But here’s how the article starts:

John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, is stepping down this summer, Kaiser officials confirmed Thursday.

John Nelson, vice president for brand communication at Oakland-based Kaiser, confirmed that August is leaving his post. Nelson stressed, however, that August is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee, but is employed by the union coalition at Kaiser.

Of course, in PartnershipLand, it’s hard to know who’s sitting on which side of the bargaining table. In fact, Kaiser funded most of August’s $200,000-a-year salary. And August worked out of a fancy office inside Kaiser’s national headquarters in Oakland.

Apparently, that’s why Kaiser’s “Vice President of Brand Communication” had to go to great lengths to make clear that “John August is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee.” Coulda fooled Tasty!

Here’s the full article, which was penned by Chris Rauber, a not-so-competent journalist who’s apparently a half-brother of SEIU-UHW’s Steve Trossman.

San Francisco Business Times

Head of Kaiser Permanente Union Coalition to Step Down

Chris Rauber, Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

May 16, 2013, 2:53pm PDT

John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, is stepping down this summer, Kaiser officials confirmed Thursday.

John Nelson, vice president for brand communication at Oakland-based Kaiser, confirmed that August is leaving his post. Nelson stressed, however, that August is not technically a Kaiser Permanente employee, but is employed by the union coalition at Kaiser.

The coalition includes unions that represent roughly 100,000 members at Kaiser.

August had headed the coalition for seven years.

Chris Rauber's beats include health care, insurance and the wine industry for the San Francisco Business Times.

The Truth Ruins Mary Kay Henry’s Feature Article in the NY Times

Tasty can imagine the scene… An excited SEIU President Mary Kay Henry grips her steaming soy latte and spreads out the Sunday edition of the New York Times so she can read a lengthy article that’s supposed to feature a sparkling profile of her. Super peachy keen!

Her eyes quickly scan the article and come to a sudden stop. Her jaw drops. WTF! The truth has finally caught up to her… like a dog that’s been chasing her for two years. And it catches Mary Kay right in the middle of her feature story in the New York Times!

And ya know what? This episode isn’t a figment of Tasty’s imagination. It actually took place on Sunday, when Mary Kay Henry’s airbrushed image was forced to confront just a little piece of the truth about the thuggish tactics she’s unleashed on SEIU’s members... Like the time she called the cops on an SEIU-UHW member simply because he wanted to attend his own union’s steward council meeting. Fortunately, the police refused to arrest the worker for the crime of “Attempting to Attend a Union Meeting.”

Here’s how the New York Times described it, ever so briefly, on Sunday:

“It got ugly, and Mary Kay was part of that episode,” said Mr. Brenner, the Labor Notes editor, and another Stern critic. At one union meeting in Walnut Creek, Calif., Ms. Henry called police to try and eject a dissident union member, but the officers left without doing so, Mr. Early wrote in “The Civil Wars.”

Here’s what happened that day.

Tasty is hoping the reporter will describe more of MKH’s infamous episodes… like the time when she locked an elected bargaining committee of rank-and-file nursing home workers out of their own contract negotiations so that SEIU officials could ink a sell-out contract with their boss. During this episode in Oakland, California, the media covered the locked-out workers who chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Mary Kay has got to go.”

Well, Tasty hears that Mary Kay better watch out cuz that dog named “Truth” is gonna be chomping on her heels for a long time to come!

P.S. Check out this article by author Steve Early in The Nation about workers' battle with Kaiser Permanente. The article includes a revealing quote from Kaiser spokesperson John Nelson, who hints at SEIU’s back-room deal with Kaiser to slash workers’ pensions and health benefits. In the article, Nelson says Kaiser is merely trying “to find ways to contain costs in partnership with our unions. Both management and labor have a stake in the financial challenges we face and meeting rising health care costs and costs of pension benefits.”  Look out, Kaiser workers! Tasty smells a giant purple rat!