How Bad Will Kaiser Permanente Services Be When There Is a Widespread Medical Emergency?

Kaiser Permanente seems to have real problems in giving medical and information services even though the COVID-19 impact on Oregon has been quite low.*

I have a relative who works at the Oregon Clinic, a specialty medical facility. They are back to full speed and taking regular preventative care appointments. My source said they are concerned because lots of clients are now waiting for emergency health conditions to occur before scheduling appointments. Everyone knows that letting any problem go to emergency status before caring for it is a bad idea.  Letting one system get to emergency not only makes it harder to repair that system but you can have negatively impacted other systems as well.

So, I figured Kaiser Permanente might be up to speed too. They have pounded on the theme of preventative health care for years.

I called to schedule routine check up appointments that were overdue for my 96 year old father who has ongoing eye pressure check and ear cleaning needs to prevent loss of vision and ear infections. I was told Kaiser is only doing emergency type care and to call back in 4 to 6 weeks to see if they would be doing preventative or non-emergency care.

My dad isn't having notable problems with his eyes, but he is having discomfort with his ears. Tough luck. Anything that cannot be handled by text or a video visit is not available unless it's an emergency.

Further, we just got a note that he is due for labs that need to be done within the next four weeks and that he needs to have his eyes checked every year because he is a diabetic and to make an appointment if they haven't been checked in a year. Apparently the person sending the letter has no idea that Kaiser is not making eye check up appointments.

Kaiser's lab search feature on its facilities page does list all their facilities that do lab work. Unfortunately, most of them are not currently doing lab work. You have to go down the list and one-by-one check to see if the listed facility is using its lab. The ones I checked out only mentioned pharmacy services. Thus, the search feature was not enabled to find lab services currently functioning.

It seems that Kaiser is having a melt-down throughout its communication and medical services.

- Kaiser is unable to provide basic preventative medical services that the Oregon Clinic is now providing.

- The website is unable to clearly point to facilities currently giving specific medical services (which should be easy for its information technology people to update).

- Kaiser hasn't let it's basic preventative medical people know what services are available so they wrongly tell people they can and should schedule appointments.

This is a worrisome administrative breakdown. Their medical staff is still competent, but the people in charge of making that staff available to give medical care and advice are not.

One last small gripe. Apparently, they do not test their online letter links. The link at the end of the following sentence does not work because the link includes the period at the end of the sentence.

If you have questions about the contents of this letter, contact us at the phone number below. If you have questions about the refill status of your prescription(s), contact your local Kaiser pharmacy. For questions about clinic locations; services available; or business hours; check your Kaiser Permanente Medical Directory or online at www.kp.org/facilities.

I know enough to see the period problem when copying the link and pasting it in the url bar. But most of their clients don't know how urls work. They just end up frustrated by the error message when trying to use the link.

What a mess. If Kaiser has clear problems when there is no big COVID-19 impact in Oregon*, how bad will their medical care and system competence be when there is a widespread medical crisis?
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*as of 6/19/20 6,344 total cases, 946 hospitalizations, and 188 total deaths in three and a half months of high level concern (they just updated the site to 6/22/20: 6,836 cases, 969 hospitalizations, 192 deaths)