Kaiser mental healthcare workers on strike

For the past 12 weeks, mental health care professionals who work for Kaiser have been on strike here in Claremont Mesa, right in front of the San Diego Medical Center, as they demand changes to their contract. I'm not trying to fight Kaiser. I just want Kaiser to kind of do the right thing. Josh 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 There was a time in the past where as a therapist I had a two and a half month wait, so we were really concerned ethically about delaying patient care. He also wants therapists to have work time built into their schedules, which he says Northern California Kaisers already have. We used to have four hours a week where we would be able to do some paperwork or call CPS or follow up or be proactive, and right now we have zero patient care time. Josh is one of many union members who hasn't been working since the strike started three months ago. Instead, he's been carrying signs pushing for change. ABC 10 News reached out to Kaiser about these concerns, and we were given this statement, which reads in part, quote, 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 what we settle, a contract agreement, so therapists would spend 50% of their time in nonpatient care. This is not logical and would result in 15,000 clinical appointments per month not being staffed. Josh says the union and Kaiser are expected to meet next week, and he's hoping progress will be made to satisfy both sides. Let's just get this over with. Please, it doesn't have to be this way. We're taking a lot of time away from patients and from therapists, so let's just get it done with. Marie Cornell, ABC 10 News.