Denver providers settle contract dispute with Kaiser

A stormy contract dispute between Kaiser Permanente of Colorado and 54 of its behavioral health professionals in Denver has been settled. Management and employees signed a contract on Aug. 21?five weeks after the practitioners staged a one-day strike to protest heavy caseloads they said undermined the quality of care available to patients enrolled in the health maintenance organization. The new contract:

? Establishes a committee of behavioral health professionals and Kaiser management to manage workload and patient care.

? Changes the rate of compensation for practitioners from yearly salaries to hourly wages, which will make the providers eligible for overtime pay.

? Guarantees that the providers won?t lose their jobs through subcontracting. During the dispute, management had threatened to eliminate behavioral health professionals from the Kaiser staff by contracting with outside providers for all its mental health services, says Ernest Duran, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 in Colorado. The local chapter represented the psychologists in the dispute.

Under the new contract, practitioners? hourly wages will be based on the number of years they have worked for Kaiser as well as their experience prior to joining the company, Duran says. Eventually, he says, the rate will be based solely on the number of years they have worked for Kaiser.

?L. Rabasca