Author Archives: henrykotula

Misconceptions About Health Costs When You’re Older

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Misconceptions About Health Costs When You’re Older

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Some significant expenses decline as we age: Most mortgages are eventually paid off, and ideally children grow up and become self-supporting.

But health care is one area in which costs are almost certain to rise. After all, one of the original justifications for Medicare — which kicks in at age 65 — is that older people have much higher health care needs and expenses.

But there are a few common misunderstandings about health costswhen people are older, including the idea that money can easily be saved by reducing wasteful end-of-life spending.

Half our lifetime spending on health care is in retirement, even though that represents only about 20 percent of a typical life span. Total health care spending for Americans 65 and older is about $15,000 per year, on average, nearly three times that of working-age Americans.

Don’t expect Medicare to provide complete protection from these expenses.

Traditional Medicare has substantial gaps, leaving Americans on the hook for a lot more than they might expect. It has no cap on how much you can pay out of pocket, for example. Such coverage gaps can be filled — at least in part — by other types of insurance. But some alternatives, such as Medicare Advantage, aren’t accepted by as many doctors or hospitals as accept traditional Medicare.

On average, retirees directly pay for about one-fifth of their total health care spending. Some spend much more.

One huge expense no Medicare plans cover is long-term care in a nursing home.

Over half of retirement-age adults will eventually need long-term care, which can cost as much as $90,000 per year at a nursing home. Although most who enter a nursing home don’t stay long, 5 percent of the population stays for more than four years. You can buy separate coverage outside the Medicare program for this, but the premiums can be high, especially if you wait until near retirement to buy.

Although Medicare is thought of as the source of health care coverage for retirees, Medicaid plays a crucial role.

Medicaid, the joint federal-state heath financing program for low-income people, has long been the nation’s main financial backstop for long-term care. Over 60 percent of nursing home residents have Medicaid coverage, and over half of the nation’s long-term care is funded by the program.

That isn’t because most people who require long-term care have low incomes. It’s because long-term care is so expensive that those needing it can frequently deplete their financial resources and then must turn to Medicaid.

A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic found that, on average, Medicaid covers 20 percent of retiree health spending. The figure is larger for lower-income retirees, who are more likely to qualify for Medicaid for more of their retirement years.

A widely held view is that much spending is wasted on “heroic” measures taken at the end of life. Are all the resources devoted to Medicare and Medicaid really necessary?

First, let’s get one misunderstanding out of the way. The proportion of health spending at the end of life in the United States is lower than in many other wealthy countries.

Still, it’s a tempting area to look for savings. Only 5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries die each year, but 25 percent of all Medicare spending is on individuals within one year of death. However, the big challenge in reducing end-of-life spending, highlighted by a recent study in Science, is that it is hard to know which patients are in their final year.

The study used all the data available from Medicare records to make predictions: For each beneficiary, it assigned a probability of death within a year. Of those with the very highest probability of dying — the top 1 percent — fewer than half actually died.

“This shows that it’s just very hard to know in advance who will die soon with much certainty,” said Amy Finkelstein, an M.I.T. economist and an author of the study. “That makes it infeasible to make a big dent in health care spending by cutting spending on patients who are almost certain to die soon.”

That does not mean that all the care provided to dying patients — or to any patient — is valuable. Another study finds that high end-of-life spending in a region is closely related to the proportion of doctors in that region who use treatments not supported by evidence — in other words, waste.

“People at high risk of dying certainly require more health care,” said Jonathan Skinner, an author of the study and a professor of economics at Dartmouth. “But why should some regions be hospitalizing otherwise similar high-risk patients at much higher rates than other regions?”

In 2014, for example, chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries in Manhattan spent 73 percent more days in the hospital in their last two years of life than comparable beneficiaries in Rochester.

“There absolutely is waste in the system,” said Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. But, he argues, waste is present throughout the life span, not just at the end of life: “We have confused that spending as end-of-life spending is somehow wasteful. But that’s not right because we are terrible at predicting who is going to die.”

Of course, beyond any statistical analysis, there are actual people involved, and wrenching individual decisions that need to be made.

“We should do all we can to push waste out of the system,” Dr. Jha said. “But spending more money on people who are suffering from an illness is appropriate, even if they die.”

 

 

DOJ recovered $2.5 billion in 2018 healthcare false claim cases

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DOJ recovered $2.5 billion in 2018 healthcare false claim cases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the DOJ, this is the ninth consecutive year that the organizations’ civil healthcare fraud settlements and judgments have exceeded $2 billion.

As part of the federal government’s increasing focus on issues of healthcare fraud, particularly in the Medicare space, the U.S. Department of Justice recovered $2.5 billion in settlements and judgments from False Claims Act Cases over the past year.

According to the DOJ, this is the ninth consecutive year that the organizations’ civil health care fraud settlements and judgments have exceeded $2 billion.

While the $2.5 billion number represents federal losses, the DOJ also said it also helped recover significant funds for state Medicaid programs

“Every year, the submission of false claims to the government cheats the American taxpayer out of billions of dollars,” Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio said in a statement.

“In some cases, unscrupulous actors undermine federal healthcare programs or circumvent safeguards meant to protect the public health … The nearly three billion dollars recovered by the Civil Division represents the Department’s continued commitment to fighting fraudsters and cheats on behalf of the American taxpayer.”

The False Claims Act has its roots in groups trying to defraud the military during and after the Civil War and was significantly strengthened since 1986 when Congress increased incentives for whistleblowers to file lawsuits alleging false claims.

In healthcare, organizations across the industry were hit with False Claims cases including drug companies, medical device manufacturers, payer organizations and healthcare providers.

The single largest recovery over the past year was a $625 million settlement paid by drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen to resolve a number of claims including that the company illegally repackaged injectable cancer drugs into pre-filled syringes and billing multiple doctors for individual drug vials.

The DOJ also brought cases against drug companies who increased drug prices by funding Medicare co-payments meant to serve as a check on healthcare costs.

In one instance, United Therapeutics Corporation paid $210 million over allegations that it illegally used a foundation to funnel co-pay obligations for Medicare patients taking its drugs. Pfizer paid nearly $24 million in a similar case, with the government alleging that the company raised the price of a cardiac drug called Tikosy by 40 percent over three months

One major case against Massachusetts-based medical device company Alere resulted in a $33.2 million settlement over allegations that it sold unreliable diagnostic devices meant to detect acute coronary syndromes, heart failure, drug overdose and other serious conditions.

On the provider side, the DOJ recovered $270 million from DaVita subsidiary HealthCare Partners Holdings for upcoding and providing inaccurate information to inflate Medicare Advantage payments.

Another major case was against former health system Health Management Associates which allegedly engaged in major Medicare fraud including illegal kickbacks to physicians for referrals, incorrect billing for observation and outpatient services and inflated facility fees.

When it comes to health plans, the government’s case against UnitedHealth Group over allegations that it knowingly obtained inflated risk adjustment payments for its Medicare Advantage beneficiaries is still ongoing.

 

 

Have enough beds? Demographic trends paint an alarming picture

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Have enough beds? Demographic trends paint an alarming picture

Healthcare providers know that inpatient volumes are down over historic levels. (But let’s not talk […]

Healthcare providers know that inpatient volumes are down over historic levels. (But let’s not talk about emergency department volumes—those are WAY up.)  They know this trend originates mostly with Medicare beneficiaries. They also know the causes: migration to outpatient services, observation day rules, intense focus on decreasing length of stay, and reduced readmissions as part of their quality initiatives.

What they may miss, however, is that this trend also has something to do with the declining average age of our nation’s senior population—a phenomenon that first began in 2005 and will continue until about 2020.  In 2005, the average age of our nation’s senior population was 75.2 years; in 2020, the average age is expected to be 74.4 years.

This fact is important because older seniors consume significantly greater healthcare resources than younger seniors. Today, those over 65 represent about 15 percent of the total U.S. population. By 2020, one out of six Americans will be 65 or older, rising to 22 percent by 2040. Understanding how this population is distributed among age cohorts is critically important not only in understanding current trends in reduced utilization, but also in preparing for the future.

Taking a Closer Look
This increasing proportion of the population that are seniors is important because the average Medicare beneficiary consumes about four times the hospital-based services as the average commercially insured person. But it is just as important to look more closely at consumption patterns within the senior population. Those between ages 75 and 84 consume about 60 percent more services than seniors ages 65 to 74. Those age 85 and above consume about two-and-a-half times as much.

According to U.S. Census forecasts, in 2021, the over-75 population will make up the lowest percentage of the senior Medicare population in recent history, at about 41 percent. By 2040, seniors older than 75 will constitute 55 percent of the total senior population. This fact alone would suggest that we are in for a reversal of declining volume patterns—but by how much?

The answer is that if nothing is done to further reduce admissions and days per 1,000 for the senior Medicare population, inpatient days should almost double from about 70 million today to about 130 million in 2040 on the basis of demographic changes alone. That represents a need for some 220,000 additional beds at 75 percent capacity by 2040—never mind all the other healthcare services that will be needed. But even as there is general recognition among healthcare leaders of the advent of an aging population, there is also the general sense that somehow, we will not need the same level of resources to meet that demand as we do today.

Where does that sense of assurance come from? Apparently, it stems from the belief that unnecessary and excess utilization exists purely due to financial reasons, and that even more of the care delivered on an inpatient basis could be performed on an outpatient basis or at home with better monitoring and intervention through new technologies. But there also appears to be an ignoring of the well-known trend for the population becoming increasingly co-morbid at ever-younger ages. Additionally, some believe that increased focus on addressing social determinants of health, which impact 64 percent of health outcomes, will reduce need for medical services.

All of these assumptions may be true, in theory. In practice, however, as a senior healthcare executive and registered nurse said to me recently, “People are really sick. You have no idea.” There is also the enormous question of how one staffs and gets paid for programs and investments that might reduce demand for hospital-based services. The economics of today’s medicalized approach to health care is unprepared to address this.

A Critical Issue for Leadership
This is an issue that should be of paramount importance to healthcare providers. As seniors comprise a greater portion of our population, demand for inpatient and post-acute services will significantly increase. The hope and dream expressed in the view that hospital-based utilization might be reduced springs from a terrible reality: Hospitals in general, with the possible exception of high-end tertiary/quaternary services, lose money on government-reimbursed volume—and this will only get worse as cost inflation continues to exceed government reimbursement trends.

The prospect of the demand for inpatient days nearly doubling over the next 20 years paints a horrifying financial picture. Who, then, would not want to hope that something magical will happen to prevent a scenario that logic and data tell us is likely to occur?

It’s time for healthcare leaders to take a hard look at the trends around senior aging and have tough discussions with their executive teams and boards about the impact these trends could have on their organizations’ futures—and what they should be doing now to prepare.

 

 

 

Envisioning the “asset-light” hospital of the future

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Across December we have been sharing our framework for helping health systems rethink their approach to investment in delivery assets, built around a functional view of the enterprise. We’ve encouraged our clients to take a consumer-oriented approach to planning, starting by asking what consumers need and working backward to what services, programs and facilities are required to meet those needs. That led us to break the enterprise into component parts that perform different “jobs” for the people they serve. We think of each of those parts as a “business”, located at either the market, regional or national level depending on where the best returns to scale are found (and on the geographic scale of any particular system). First we shared  our view of the “access business”, pushing systems to create a broad web of access points across their market, with the goal of building consumer loyalty over time. Last week we described our vision for the “senior care” business, where an array of assets traditionally providing postacute care, including rehabilitation and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), home health, and even hospital-at-home programs, could expand their capabilities to manage chronic disease exacerbations in elderly patients in lower-acuity, lower-cost settings. This week we’ll describe how the changes in these outpatient care settings will affect the profile of the traditional acute care hospital.
 
Shifting demographics will dramatically change the patient mix of American hospitals across the next decade. As Baby Boomers age into their Medicare years, ED and hospital beds will fill with elderly patients admitted for exacerbations of chronic diseases like congestive heart failure and diabetes, their care reimbursed at public-payer rates. Over time it’s easy to imagine hospitals starting to look like giant SNFs, filled with elderly patients receiving nursing care and drugs. With current cost and labor structures, this shift will be financially unsustainable for hospitals, as Medicare payment for many medical admissions does not cover the cost of the inpatient admission, forcing hospitals to pursue alternative care settings for these patients. As we described last week, as many as half of chronic disease admissions could be managed by an expanded “senior care” platform. Adding to this potential shift of medical admissions to an outpatient setting, we anticipate that an expanded postacute and home care platform could also accelerate the shift of inpatient surgeries to an ambulatory setting. If surgery centers could manage patients for 24- to 48-hour stays, and hospital-at-home capabilities supported recovery at home, some experts believe that a majority of non-emergent inpatient surgeries—including many orthopedic and general surgery cases—could shift away from the hospital. If this shift to alternative settings bears out, demand for traditional “med-surg” beds could decline significantly, even in the face of demographic shifts.  
 
The graphic below describes an alternative vision for the future acute-care hospital that takes into account these changes. This “hospital of the future” will be asset-light, focused on providing higher levels of emergency, medical and surgical care, with capacity weighted toward more intensive patient management. The acute care facility will be supported by a network of connected and expanded ambulatory resources, including outpatient surgery, postacute services, home care and access services, all enabled by remote monitoring technology. While payment changes covering expanded outpatient care will accelerate this movement, we believe that payer and patient mix shifts alone will provide motivation for hospitals to pursue these strategies. The cost of adding a new med-surg bed now tops $2M in most markets—trimming even a few beds that may not be needed will provide capital that can go a long way in expanding outpatient capabilities to support lower-acuity care.

 

Policy upheaval, tech giant disruption and megamergers: Healthcare Dive’s 10 best stories of 2018

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https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/policy-upheaval-tech-giant-disruption-and-megamergers-healthcare-dives-1/543390/

Mobile health records and nurse protests also grabbed readers this year.

This year in healthcare was marked by sweeping changes, including seemingly constant vertical and horizontal consolidation, led by the $69 billion CVS grab of Aetna and Cigna’s $67 billion acquisition of Express Scripts.

As 2018 wound down, a federal judge took an ax to the Affordable Care Act as the Trump administration kept up its efforts to undermine the law, with CMS expanding short-term health plans many say are built to subvert the ACA. Elimination of the individual mandate penalty, Medicaid expansion and rising premiums all likely contributed to declined enrollment on ACA exchanges as well.

The administration encouraged states to use waivers to expand controversial Medicaid work requirements and proposed site-neutral payments, rattling health systems of all sizes that were already struggling under ferocious operating headwinds. Hospitals cut back on services and invested heavily in lucrative outpatient facilities in an attempt to reclaim volume.

Tech companies Apple and Amazon pushed further into the space, with the former focusing on mobile health apps and the latter focusing on, well, almost everything.

But that’s just scratching the surface. Here is a curated list of Healthcare Dive’s top stories from the last year.

    1. Optum a step ahead in vertical integration frenzy

      After a 2017 marked by failed horizontal mergers, vertical consolidation came into vogue during the year, led by CVS-Aetna, Cigna-Express Scripts and Humana-Kindred.

      Some smart observers saw a predecessor to these unions in UnitedHealth Group’s Optum: a pharmacy benefit manager plus a care services unit that employs over 30,000 physicians, using data analytics to capitalize on consumerism and value-based care.

      Our piece on Optum’s solid foothold in the space, and its likelihood of staying ahead of the nascent competition, was Healthcare Dive’s most-read article in 2018. Read More »

    2. New Medicare Advantage rules hold big potential for pop health

      A novel Medicare Advantage rule giving payers more flexibility to sell supplemental benefits to chronically ill enrollees sparked a fair amount of interest in our readers.

      The rule offered up a slate of new opportunities for insurers such as UnitedHealthcare and Humana that can now work with rideshare companies to provide transportation to medical appointments, air conditioners for beneficiaries with asthma and other measures around issues like food insecurity in a broad shift to recognizing social determinants of health. Read More »

    3. Apple debuts medical records on iPhone

      Outside players such as Apple, Amazon and Google moved forward in their bids to disrupt healthcare in 2018. Apple rang in the New Year with its announcement that customers would now be able to access their medical records on the Health app following months of speculation and buzz.

      The move looks to put access to personal, sensitive data back in the patients’ hands, an objective a lot of the entrenched healthcare ecosystem can get behind as well. Heavy hitters on the EHR side (Epic, Cerner, athenahealth) and the provider side (Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai, Geisinger) are taking place in the initiative. Read More »

    4. At least 14 states have legislation addressing safe staffing currently, but California is the only one to implement a strict ratio at one nurse per every five patients. Looking to 2019, in Pennsylvania voters elected a governor who has voiced support for state legislation. Read More »

    5. More employers go direct to providers, sidestepping payers

      Employers ramped up their cost-containment creativity in 2018. One method? Cutting out the middleman and forging direct relationships with providers themselves, whether it’s contracting with an accountable care organization to manage an entire employee population or a simple advocacy role to fight for payment reform.

      Aside from some correlated CMS interest, big names forging inroads in the arena include General Motors, Walmart, Whole Foods, Boeing, Walt Disney and Intel, all with various levels of investment.

      Although only 6% of employers are doing so currently, 22% are considering solidifying some sort of provider relationship for next year according to a Willis Towers Watson survey. It’s also likely the Amazon-J.P. Morgan-Berkshire Hathaway venture will look at direct contracting in its (still vague) mission to lower employer costs. Read More »

    6. Amazon Business’ medical supply chain ambitions: 4 things to know

      Amazon’s B2B purchasing arm reached out and grabbed the healthcare supply chain this year, shaking a once-predictable business model.

      Under intense operating headwinds, supply chain professionals looked to trim the fat from traditional distribution and supplier models in 2018. Some looked to Amazon Business, which generated more than a billion dollars in sales its first year alone by relying on its marketplace model, streamlined ordering and a “tail spend” strategy.

      1. Healthcare Dive discussed this and more with global healthcare leader at Amazon Chris Holt in an exclusive interview that drove a lot of interest. Read More »

GE, Medtronic among those linking with hospitals for value-based care

Value-based care was a buzzword over the past year, with providers, payers and healthcare execs across the board looking (or saying they’re looking) for ways to cut costs and improve quality.

Although legal barriers stemming from the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law persist, medical technology companies jumped on the bandwagon, with big names like GE, Philips and Medtronic coupling with hospitals to promote VBC initiatives. Read More »

  1. How Amazon, JPM, Berkshire Hathaway could disrupt healthcare (or not)

The combination of the e-commerce giant, a 200-year-old multinational investment bank and Warren Buffet’s redoubtable holding company joining forces to take on healthcare costs spooked investors in traditional industry players. The venture added a slew of big names to its C-suite, including Atul Gawande and Jack Stoddard for CEO and COO, respectively. Read More »

 

 

 

What We Learned in 2018: Health and Medicine

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Developments in medicine and health that we’re still thinking about at year’s end.

We learned many doctors do not disclose financial ties when they publish research.

Dr. José Baselga, a towering figure in the cancer world, resigned from his post at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in September. An investigation by The Times and ProPublica had found that he failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from health care companies in dozens of research articles. But Dr. Baselga wasn’t the only medical researcher who failed to make such disclosures, a problem that is aggravated by confusing advice from medical journals and a failure to adequately vet the contributors to their pages.

We were reminded about how bad the flu can really be.

In the winter of 2017-2018, 80,000 Americans died from the flu. It was the highest number in over a decade, and included 180 young children and teenagers. Some hospitals had to bring out their “surge tents” to treat the overflow of patients. While no flu vaccine is perfect at this time, the shots are particularly effective with children, and the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, compared getting vaccinated with wearing your seatbelt. You already do that, don’t you?

We learned that when hospitals combine, patients can end up paying more.

Everywhere in the United States, hospitals are merging. Instead of creating savings that get passed on to consumers, an analysis found that in some regions, the opposite occurred. From 2010 through 2013, the price of an average hospital stay soared, with prices in most areas going up between 11 percent and 54 percent.

We learned how one city has started to turn the corner on the opioids epidemic.

Dayton, Ohio, had one of the highest opioid overdose death rates in the nation. Now, it may be at the leading edge of a waning phase of the epidemic. While the data are preliminary, a variety of factors contributed to the reduction in deaths: Medicaid expansion paying for treatment; dwindling availability of one particular drug; greater use of naloxone, which can reverse overdoses; a large network of recovery support groups; and, law enforcement and public health workers improving their coordination.

We learned that vaping among young people is a growing national problem.

E-cigarettes may help some people quit smoking, but the soaring use of Juul and other vaping devices by teenagers has motivated the Food and Drug Administration to place new limits on the sales of e-cigarette flavors. Schools are grappling with students furtively vaping, as teenagers who may never have smoked a cigarette find themselves struggling to shake a new addiction to nicotine.

We learned the disease may no longer be “a lifelong thing,” as one patient put it.

People with hemophilia, the inability to form blood clots, spend their lives menaced by the prospect of uncontrolled bleeding into a muscle or joint, or even the brain. Experimental gene therapy treatments have rid a few patients — for now, at least — of the condition. It does not yet amount to a cure, and the treatment is imperfect. But some who received the treatments are finding themselves uneasily adjusting to a life with new freedoms.

We learned untreated strep throat leads to heart failure in poor countries.

In the United States and other rich countries, cheap antibiotics cure children with strep throat easily. But in poor countries, strep can result in rheumatic heart disease and a long, slow death sentence. In Rwanda, doctors from a group called Team Heart visit once a year to perform heart valve-replacement surgery for 16 people. But there are thousands more people who need the procedure in a country that has no heart surgeons.

We learned how public health research can be compromised by private interests.

In June, the National Institutes of Health shut down a study of the effects of moderate drinking on heart attacks and stroke, following an investigation by The Times. The researchers who proposed the study sought funding from beer and liquor companies, and suggested that the results would support a daily drink as a healthy choice. The N.I.H.’s director, Dr. Francis Collins, said the trial seemed to be “set up in a way that would maximize the chances of showing a positive effect of alcohol.”

 

 

 

 

Labor board will charge Kaiser for refusing to bargain, union says

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https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/labor-board-will-charge-kaiser-for-refusing-to-bargain-union-says/544648/

Dive Brief:

  • The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is preparing to prosecute health system Kaiser Permanente for refusing bargain with SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, according to the union. SEIU-UHW, part of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, filed a complaint with the NLRB in the spring charging Kaiser for refusing to negotiate a new contract that covers 85,000 employees across eight states and D.C. Hearings for case will likely begin in the spring.
  • In their complaint, SEIU-UHW and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions claimed Kaiser tried to set conditions on bargaining that would ban unions from engaging in political action that could affect the healthcare organization. Kaiser issued a statement last week arguing the delay was due to a split that occurred within the coalition earlier this year, and said it is “confident the NLRB will agree that Kaiser Permanente has acted lawfully and in good faith” in dealings with SEIU-UHW.
  • That may not be the case. SEIU-UHW is planning on proposing a new arrangement. If Kaiser doesn’t agree to enter into that settlement proposed by the union, the NLRB is expected to issue charges by the end of the month — if not sooner, according to an email obtained by Healthcare Dive.

Dive Insight:

Kaiser has been wracked with labor woes this year. The health system reached an agreement with the Alliance of Health Care Unions — the 21 unions that broke off from the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions — earlier this year. That split occurred the day before bargaining was scheduled to begin, and negotiations with the coalition did not move forward.

That contract, according to SEIU-UHW, included a condition prohibiting those unions from taking any kind of political action against Kaiser, including ballot initiatives, legislation or public policy campaigns. That’s the same condition that led SEIU-UHW to file its complaint earlier this year.

“The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions strongly opposes such a proposal,” SEIU-UHW said in a statement, “and believes this condition violates their free speech rights.”

Healthcare Dive reached out to the NLRB for confirmation on its reported decision to prosecute Kaiser, but did not receive a response in time for publishing.

“The decision confirms what has been clear to workers for months now: Kaiser isn’t the labor friendly employer it claims to be, nor is it as committed to patient care as it claims to be,” Lanette Griffin, a laboratory assistant at Kaiser Permanente, said in a statement. “If Kaiser was committed to improving patient care, you would expect it to want to negotiate a contract to retain and attract the outstanding caregivers who have driven the corporation’s success. But Kaiser is showing its true colors when it avoids bargaining and wants to silence our voices.”

Last week, 4,000 mental health workers represented by National United Healthcare Workers engaged in a five-day strike against Kaiser, causing the system to postpone some surgeries. Kaiser has attributed the cancellations to California Nurses Association nurses joined the picket line in an authorized sympathy strike.

“The determination by the district 32 office of the National Labor Relations Board is not a verdict. It is the beginning of the NLRB’s process to hold evidentiary hearings to fully understand this complicated case,” Kaiser said in its statement.