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The
SHHH Californian - FALL 2001
/ Page 7
GOOD NEWS: KAISER PERMANENTE
HMO WILL GIVE
FULL ACCESS TO DISABLED MEMBERS.
BAD NEWS: NATURALLY, THEY DON'T INCLUDE 300,000
HARD OF HEARING CA KAISER MEMBERS
The nation's largest non profit health maintenance organization
(HMO), Kaiser Permanente (KP), agreed in April 2001 to revamp
all its California health centers and policies to ensure that
people with disabilities have access to the full range of health
care.
The agreement will settle a class-action lawsuit, the first
of its kind in the nation that was filed last year against Kaiser
Permanente, on behalf of all its California members with disabilities.
The lawsuit argued that Kaiser discriminated against disabled
patients by giving them inferior medical care. Part of the problem,
the lawsuit said, is inaccessible medical equipment, like examination
tables that do not lower and scales that cannot be used by people
in wheelchairs.
"We believe this will be revolutionary in terms of its
impact on health care for people with disabilities," said
Sid Wolinsky, litigation director of Disability Rights Advocates,
the Oakland group that brought the lawsuit. The settlement Kaiser
agreed to is far-reaching, covering not only the installation
of accessible medical equipment and the removal of architectural
barriers, but also a broad commitment to develop training programs,
handbooks and a complaint system to meet the needs of the disabled.
Kaiser also agreed to consider developing specialized clinical
programs in disability care and to review all its policies to
ensure that they meet the needs of people with vision, hearing,
cognitive, speech and mobility disabilities.
While the settlement covers only Kaiser's California operation,
whatever Kaiser finds to work well in improving health care
for the disabled in California would be shared with its operations
nationwide and with other health care providers. Kaiser has
six million members, 28 hospitals, 100 clinics and 7,000 doctors
in California statewide, and a smaller number in nine other
states. Kaiser has chosen its hospitals in Riverside and San
Francisco as models where the new policies will be worked out.
I carefully read the above article, and I am happy for mobility
impaired people. But what about hard of hearing people, the
largest group of disabled people. There are six million
Kaiser members in California. Actually 10% of this population
is hearing impaired, or 600,000 people. Let's be conservative
and cut that to 5% or 300,000. That is still 300,000 Kaiser
members who suffer from hearing loss, who do not have full communications
access to medical services. They cannot use Kaiser Healthphone.
They cannot attend Kaiser Health Education classes. They have
trouble hearing the doctor, hearing while getting an MRI, hearing
while a patient in the hospital. They have trouble making an
appointment. Why are hard of hearing people always forgotten?
Under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
all Kaiser programs were to be made accessible by January 1992.
Why does Kaiser Permanente and the medical profession ignore
hearing loss as a serious disability?
I have belonged to KP for forty years. It is an excellent HMO,
and gives many Health Education classes, educating their members
about controlling and preventing disease. I signed up for one
of these classes, and phoned before I went, asking if Kaiser
provided assistive listening devices. They said, "No,
but go early and sit in the front row!!!" There were
40 people in the class, seated in a long, narrow U. An uncaptioned
video was shown. I could not understand the video or the teacher
very well, and I could not hear the questions at all. These
Health Education classes are inaccessible to 300,000 California
Kaiser members.
Kaiser has just opened a new bilingual Chinese Family Practice
service with physicians speaking Mandarin or Cantonese. Their
Member Service Call Center answers the phone in Spanish or Chinese.
Here, Kaiser gives communications access to Chinese/Spanish
speakers. 300,000 hard of hearing Kaiser members want communications
access too.
Hard of hearing is just another language that needs to be
translated into English. Spanish speakers can hear the sounds,
but cannot understand the words. Hard of hearing people are
also like this. They, too, can hear the sounds, but cannot understand
the words.
There are two large categories of auditory information that
need to be translated: one is all videos, such as music videos,
educational videos, movie videos, exercise videos, documentary
videos, DVD's. ALL videos in English need to be closed or
open captioned so that Spanish speakers, Chinese speakers,
AND hard of hearing people can understand them.
The other category of information that needs to be translated
is that of speech, such as, hearing your doctor, hearing while
getting an MRI, hearing while a patient in the hospital, hearing
teachers, docents, small panels and tour guides. For Spanish
speakers or Chinese speakers an FM set is used. The translator
speaks into the microphone of the FM transmitter and the Spanish
speakers or Chinese speakers listen and understand using their
FM receivers. Translation for hard of hearing people is exactly
the same. The speaker speaks into the microphone of the FM transmitter
and hard of hearing people listen and understand using their
FM receivers.
I trust that Kaiser will consider the needs of the largest
disability group of all, and give hard of hearing people full
communications access to medical services.
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