‘Thank God they’re still alive’: Kaiser therapists claim new screening system puts patients at greater risk by delaying their treatment

ILana Marcucci-Morris worries about the patients she sees and how long it took for them to arrive at her office. At Kaiser Permanente’s outpatient psychiatric clinic in Oakland, California, she says she is increasingly seeing people with serious mental health problems who she believes should have been brought to the emergency room weeks earlier. For those who make it to their appointments, she thinks, “Thank God they’re still alive.”

According to Marcucci-Morris, a licensed clinical social worker, that wasn’t always the case. Previously, licensed professionals at Kaiser were almost always the first point of contact for patients with behavioral health issues, she said. She noticed a change since January 2024, after the healthcare giant introduced a new screening process for first-time patients. The new system introduced office workers who are not licensed practitioners to ask written “yes” or “no” questions to assess the severity of the condition.