Kaiser Permanente lays off nurses in two Bay Area hospitals

Kaiser Permanente managers met with 42 outpatient clinic nurses in San Rafael and Petaluma on Thursday to notify them that their positions are being eliminated.

The nurses work in a variety of clinics, including dermatology, gastroenterology, general surgery, ophthalmology, head and neck, psychiatry, obstetrics, gynecology, orthopedics, pediatrics and urology.

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“At our San Rafael Medical Center, which employs nearly 2,500 staff and physicians, the volume of care in our outpatient settings increased significantly during the pandemic and has now shifted to other settings or locations,” a statement issued by Kaiser said. “To match staffing and care needs, we are rebalancing resources.”

In its statement, Kaiser said that it will work to redeploy nurses issued layoff notices to one of 400 available nursing positions that it currently has open.

“If an affected employee cannot be deployed in another position, or chooses not to remain with Kaiser Permanente, we offer career support and outplacement services,” the company said.

Kaiser nurses disagreed the move were necessary.

“There is no need for any layoffs,” said Colleen Gibbons, a registered nurse in the medical-surgical department of Kaiser’s San Rafael Medical Center. “Patients are already waiting for care.”

Gibbons said it is taking over a month for Kaiser patients to see their physician and anywhere from six to eight months or longer for routine colonoscopies.

“Eliminating these positions will just increase the wait times for patients, which in turn will increase the amount of patients going to the emergency room that’s already bursting at the seams with patients,” she said.

Pamela Cronin, a pediatric nurse who works in both San Rafael and Petaluma, said, “This was very unexpected. Nothing like this has happened in the last 30 years.”

“We are already so short-staffed in the clinics that when someone is on vacation or calls in sick, more often than not, there is no nurse to cover,” Cronin said.

Cronin said the elimination of 42 nurses would constitute a 28% reduction in the 150 outpatient clinic nurses currently working for Kaiser in San Rafael and Petaluma.

One of the nurses being laid off, Jenn Cass, a triage/advice nurse at Kaiser’s ophthalmology clinic in San Rafael, said she had first-hand experience with the long wait times.

Cass, who is 64, said that when she recently tried to schedule a colonoscopy in San Rafael that had been ordered by her doctor, she was told she would have to wait two months.

“I’m a cancer survivor, so this is critical for me,” she said.

Cass said she was able to get an earlier appointment at a clinic in San Francisco, but she said traveling that distance for a procedure that requires sedation is a hardship for many of Marin County’s older residents.

“The way it was presented to us is that they’re rebalancing for patient care, but it’s only going to hurt care because patients can’t get through on the phones as it is,” she said.

Cass said that as an ophthalmology nurse sometimes the advice she dispenses can be critical.

“We have diagnosed strokes over the phone when someone has a branch occlusion stroke in their eye,” she said. “We’ve diagnosed heart attacks and had to call 911.”

Cass, who is single, said the loss of her job will be an economic hardship for her. She said she has been looking for jobs with Kaiser online, and has found nothing.

“I’m too young for Medicare. I will lose my medical benefits in 30 days, and what if there’s cancer?”

Cass said she also will not be able to make her house payments without a paycheck. She said she bought a house in San Rafael near the Kaiser clinic at 1650 Los Gamos Drive in 2020 after transferring from Kaiser San Francisco.

“I would have never bought that house if I’d known that this was going to happen,” she said.

Last month, University of California, San Francisco Health issued layoff notices to about 200 employees, 1% of its workforce, citing unspecified “serious financial challenges.”

Kaiser nurses, however, question the need for Kaiser to cut costs given the glowing financial reports that the company has posted recently. Kaiser reported a net income of $12.9 billion in 2024 and net income of $2 billion in the first quarter of 2025.

Kaiser created an affiliated nonprofit, Risant Health, in 2023. Since then, Risant Health has acquired two health systems:  Danville, Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health, a 10-hospital system and Greensboro, North Carolina-based Cone Health, a five-hospital system.

According to Becker’s Hospital Review, Risant plans to acquire three to four more systems over the next five years to grow into a company with $30 billion to $35 billion in annual revenue.

“They’re taking our California money and diverting it to other areas instead of taking care of the patients that have prepaid for their health care,” Gibbons said.

A June report in Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency, stated that in fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 Kaiser benefitted from “sustained membership levels, a rate increase, and ongoing expense management, including improved employee turnover and lower contract labor use.”

“Like all U.S. acute care health providers, Kaiser faces ongoing headwinds and uncertainty, particularly from federal policy, including possible Medicaid cuts and tariffs,” the report said. “Nevertheless, Kaiser’s deep and broad reach, diversification of assets, and favorable payor mix should yield a more resilient operating platform when compared to many acute care hospital providers.”