California insurance regulators announced Tuesday that they have reached a settlement with Kaiser Permanente to address its repeated failures to provide patients with timely access to mental health services.
Under the agreement — the result of two years of negotiations between the state Department of Managed Health Care and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan — Kaiser has agreed to hire an outside consultant for three years to help it address the access problems and improve oversight of its behavioral health program.
The agreement also acknowledges steps the plan has already taken to improve access, including hiring 850 additional behavioral health therapists in the past five years. (Kaiser Health News, which produces California Healthline, is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)
“This is a really huge deal, and it’s going to impact the lives of millions of Kaiser [health plan] members who need mental health services,” said Shelley Rouillard, director of the managed care department, one of the state’s two insurance regulators. “For the first time I’m aware of, Kaiser has committed to fixing the access problems that their enrollees have had in regards to mental health services.”
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