Earlier this summer, a contract between CalViva health and Kaiser Permanente left 9,000 Medi-Cal patients in the San Joaquin Valley to find all new doctors. We were curious how that transition happened, so we set out to find out how significant this change was in the healthcare world and how doctors and patients experienced it. Carlo DeCicco has been on hold for about seven minutes, the bland hold music ringing out from his cell phone on the table in front of him. He’s trying to reach a case manager with his daughter’s health insurance network. When a representative answers, he picks the phone up so quickly he nearly drops it. “I’m trying to call to see where or how or what I can do with my daughter, where I can take her to see a psychiatrist,” he says. DeCicco’s teenaged daughter suffers from chronic depression. She’s been a Kaiser Permanente patient for around 10 years, seeing a child psychiatrist who knows her needs and can adjust her medication. So it was a shock when a letter
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