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Kaiser settles lawsuit settles lawsuit
SAN FRANCISCO — Kaiser Permanente settled a lawsuit Thursday accusing it of providing inferior care to disabled patients.
The suit, filed in July by Disability Rights Advocates in Alameda County Superior Court, charged that the nation’s largest not-for-profit health maintenance organization failed to offer accessible facilities, examination tables, toilets, scales and other medical devices for wheelchair users and other disabled persons using its California facilities.
The suit is the latest legal challenge for Oakland-based Kaiser, which last year was accused of requiring psychiatrists to prescribe medication to patients they had not seen. In December, the health care concern, which has 6 million California clients, also was accused of unlawfully requiring patients to split pills to cut costs. Richard Pettingill, Kaiser’s president for California, said the company and plaintiffs began meeting to address the concerns of the disabled, days after the suit was filed.
“Because our common goal is to improve access to medical care for our disabled members, I am pleased Kaiser Permanente and Disability Rights Advocates can collaborate rather than litigate to benefit our disabled members,” he said.
John Metzler, a Benicia man who suffers from cerebral palsy and is unable to walk, was among three plaintiffs in the suit against Kaiser’s 27 hospitals and dozens of outpatient facilities throughout California.
Because of Metzler’s disability, he said he was unable to be weighed at the Kaiser hospital in Vallejo, even though it’s critical to his health that his weight not greatly fluctuate.
Also, sores on his body were troubling him, but doctors at the hospital were unable to examine them because the hospital did not have proper lifting equipment.
“Our goal in bringing this lawsuit was to make the health care system truly available to people with disabilities,” he said.
Under the terms of the agreement, Kaiser will begin removing architectural barriers to those in wheelchairs, acquire equipment helpful to Metzler and others in his situation and implement a health care training program for its workers.
