We started this session with a conversation with two representatives from Columbia Health, Dr. Michael McNeil and Dr. Richard Eichler. We pressed Dr. McNeil to follow up on items from our last conversation about Health Benefits and were given a clearer timeline for the negotiations of health insurance options with Aetna. We were informed that Student Health Services has no plans to make our recommended changes to the online appointment system, and do not currently have the ability to implement online appointment system access to dependents covered under the insurance plan. Columbia\u2019s bargaining team has continued to hold off on engaging further over health insurance bargaining\u2013\u2013a mandatory topic of bargaining. When pressed, they promised to provide more details over costs after the new year when recent data from Aetna will become available, but refused to discuss even the structural or non-economic components of our Health Benefits proposal until then.<\/p>\n
We were able to learn many more details about Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS) from its Executive Director, Dr. Eichler. We asked questions about wait times for appointments with CPS, their staffing capacity, and representation of minority groups and specific identities among their therapist staff, their process and follow up for referrals both in- and out-of-network. Dr. Eichler suggested that Aetna could provide data on relative use of in- and out-of-network referrals for mental health, as well as how CPS response surveys could be divided into graduate students vs undergrads as another source of information for our bargaining team.<\/p>\n