Suit Faults Kaiser’s Care for Disabled

Marking the 10th anniversary of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, advocates sued Kaiser Permanente of California Wednesday, alleging that the health care giant fails to provide equal and adequate care for the physically disabled.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of three people who rely on wheelchairs, contends that the disabled face pervasive barriers at scores of Kaiser facilities statewide, including exam rooms, counters and restrooms, as well as a lack of specially equipped exam tables and weight scales.

Despite the benchmark federal legislation, which guarantees equal treatment for 43 million disabled Americans, advocates say the case demonstrates that more work is sorely needed.

“It seems to us particularly ironic that a decade after the most sweeping act ever enacted for people with disabilities, they are still treated as second-class citizens with respect to health care,” said Sid Wolinsky, director of litigation for Disability Rights Advocates, an Oakland nonprofit group that filed the lawsuit.

Jim Anderson, a spokesman for the Bay Area-based Kaiser, said Wednesday that his organization takes the issues raised in the lawsuit seriously.

“We have a long history of caring for people with disabilities and we believe that we’re in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act,” he said. “But this lawsuit raises new and serious questions. And we’re ready to sit down and talk about where we might be able to improve.”

Larry Paradis, executive director of Disability Rights Advocates, warned other health maintenance organizations nationwide to take notice of the lawsuit against Kaiser, which operates 27 hospitals and more than 100 clinics statewide.

“This lawsuit is about getting the attention of a huge bureaucracy that has ignored its civil rights obligations to the disabled for over a decade,” said Paradis, who uses a wheelchair. “Kaiser is a disgrace, but they’re no worse and no better than the others.”

John Lonberg, a 63-year-old Riverside man who suffered a spinal cord injury in 1982 and has no feeling below the chest, said he tried in vain for 18 years to persuade his Kaiser clinic to install an accessible exam table and weight scale.

In the meantime, Lonberg said, he has never been weighed and has been denied adequate physical examinations. Standard examination tables don’t drop low enough and there is often no one qualified to lift him, so doctors have performed cursory exams as he has sat in his chair, he said.

“You almost feel like you’ve disappeared. You’ve fallen off their radar screen. You don’t matter,” said Lonberg, part of the trio that filed the suit. “I pay the same premiums as an able-bodied person and yet I don’t get anywhere near the same care.”

Advocacy lawyers say one Kaiser patient who uses a wheelchair was told to weigh herself on a set of truck scales because clinic operators did not have a special device, which costs as little as $200.

“When it comes to recording the weight of disabled people, doctors just take their word for it, which is incredible,” Wolinsky said, “because changes in weight tell a great deal about the progress of an illness. It’s a major index of medical status.”

Lonberg said the lack of care at Kaiser became life-threatening: He developed a pressure sore on his buttocks that went undetected and became infected, eventually requiring surgery.

‘They take the easy way out and do everything while I sit in the chair,” he said. “But they miss things.”

Of Kaiser’s nearly 6 million patients statewide, more than 100,000 are disabled and 40,000 use wheelchairs, advocates say.

Although he could not confirm those numbers, Kaiser spokesman Anderson said, “We have a whole bunch of disabled people who are extremely happy with their care and who have different stories to tell.”

The lawsuit against Kaiser is the latest legal challenge mounted by Disability Rights Advocates.

In a closely watched case that could set a standard for large department stores, the group sued Macy’s, claiming that the chain’s narrow aisles did not provide adequate space for people in wheelchairs. Last month, a federal judge ordered the chain’s flagship Union Square store in San Francisco to create pathways between clothing racks that were at least 32 inches wide to accommodate disabled shoppers. Macy’s had argued that it needed every inch of floor space to display goods and remain competitive.

The advocacy group also has sued Bay Area Rapid Transit and the city of Sacramento for allegedly failing to provide adequate access for the disabled.

In Wednesday’s lawsuit, advocates cited numerous problems faced by the disabled in securing the most basic medical care.

Disabled patients nationwide are three times less likely to receive needed health care than able-bodied people, the lawsuit alleges. They are also four times as likely to have special needs not covered by health insurance, the group says.

A recent medical journal study of more than 15,000 women nationwide also found that 44% of able-bodied women have received mammograms, but only 13% of disabled women have undergone the procedure, Wolinsky said.

The study, published in the June 1999 issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, found that 23% of disabled women have had Pap smears, compared with 41% of able-bodied women.

“Doctors don’t understand the issues involved with the disabled,” Wolinsky said. “There’s no other explanation for not weighing people and not giving mammograms--other than ignorance.”

Johnnie Lacy, another Kaiser patient who joined the suit filed in Alameda County Superior Court, said she feels like a prisoner: not of her wheelchair, but of her health care provider. “This isn’t about doctors,” said the Hayward resident, 63. “It’s about the system, the big heartless machine you’re forced to deal with. When you’re disabled, you take what they hand you until you can get something better. That’s what this lawsuit is all about. Getting something better.”