Great news! The California Court of Appeals has reversed a prior ruling (pdf) by the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, and has sustained Andrew Arce’s right to a class action lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente. The case is scheduled for a jury trial on March 22, 2010 absent any delays.[...]

Courtesy of Vickie Travis of the Kaiser Papers:
Valencia Assistant Principal Timothy Howard and his wife Mary Howard were awarded $5 million in a binding arbitration against Kaiser Healthcare. A panel of three arbitrators found that Kaiser physicians were negligent for failing to timely work up Mr. Howard’s transient ischemic attacks (TIA) of the retina [...]

Excerpt:

Thank you to Paul Payne of the The Press Democrat, for his report today on the ratings of seven Sonoma County Hospitals, by the non-profit Niagara Health Quality Coalition. The report cards were based on California Department of Health records for 2007, and covered 36 different procedures and conditions, as well as hospital errors and mortality rates.

A one-star rating indicates worse than average outcomes, two stars for average, and three stars were given for better than average. There was no overall grade.

Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa was the only hospital in Sonoma County to receive three one-star below average ratings, for acute stroke mortality, birth trauma for infants, and post-operative hip fractures.

Queue KP’s PRBS response:[...]

First, our apologies for the email alert that went out in error earlier today due to technical issues. This is the correct link to the completed post.

We received an interesting comment today, left by a Kaiser Permanente physician on Donna and Jack Berlin’s post about their son Sean’s death at Kaiser Walnut Creek.

Robert identified himself as a “non Kaiser physician,” despite proof from our traffic logs that he was posting from a KP facility. He then went on to [...]

This heartbreaking story arrived in our in box a few days ago. There is only one thing we can think of that is more tragic than a mother having to bury her child, and that is having to live with the knowledge that the death occurred unnecessarily at the hands of the doctors entrusted to save him. Justice rarely prevails in these situations, because the system has long been stacked against patients and in favor of corporate abuse of money and power. We ask our readers to keep Sean Berlin in heart and mind as they witness KP CEO George Halvorson making his rounds, touting Kaiser-style health care “reform” for all… because your child could be next.

Kaiser Permanente is attempting to compel arbitration in the Arce vs. Kaiser autism lawsuit. Why? Because arbitration is a closed proceeding that is rigged in KP’s favor, of course! We don’t know what this would mean for the class action portion of the case, but hopefully someone with a more brilliant legal mind [...]

In April we posted a request from California attorney Scott Glovsky, who is seeking plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente for refusing to cover treatments for autism as required by law. The lawsuit — which was filed on behalf of Andrew Arce, a two-year-old child Kaiser has denied treatment — alleges breach [...]

SAN FRANCISCO, June 5 /PRNewswire/ — Jeffery Sterman, Public Affairs Director and voice of Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco for ten years is claiming AIDS discrimination and breach of contract. A person with AIDS, Sterman is one of those who helped create the hospital’s response to HIV and AIDS.
David J. St. Louis, Sterman’s attorney, filed [...]

Our apologies for the dearth of updates lately, but by no means does our temporary silence indicate that the Kaiser Krappola hasn’t continued to hit the fan. There’s too much to post individually, so please enjoy this Kaiser Permanente News Roundup:

Now that Kaiser has completed the nationwide roll out of the outpatient side of its [...]

Now this is funny. It’s rare that we post something that isn’t Kaiser related, but this extremely humorous political ad for Senator Ron Wyden’s Healthy Americans Act is about universal health care, which we strongly support.
While we would prefer a single-payer universal health care plan that cuts insurance company bureaucracy and greed out of [...]