Call center nurses at Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente say the health system uses AI to monitor how long they spend on patient calls and presses them to move faster, CalMatters reported in July.
Software flags calls that run longer than 15 minutes, and nurses whose calls run longer can face performance reviews, according to the report. A separate tool predicts each day whether a nurse is being unproductive or is slow to pick up, CalMatters reported.
For the triage nurses who staff Kaiser’s advice lines, the stopwatch collides with the work. “People can get hurt,” said Charlotte Capulong, who has 22 years of call center experience. “You aren’t calling Comcast. We’re dealing with life here.”
Raquel Alvarez Sanchez, a call center nurse in Vallejo, Calif., since 2010, said nearly every nurse she knows has been coached on their “average handle time.”
“The only thing I can think of is they’re doing it for profit,” she said.
Kaiser Permanente told Becker’s it does not enforce call time metrics or use average handle time to assess performance.
The system has “modernized tools used in our call centers, including AI-enabled technologies that help improve quality assurance and provide more accurate and reliable results,” a spokesperson said. “These technologies help reduce administrative burden and support nurses and care teams to focus on what matters most: caring for our members and patients.”
“Our nurses and care teams are empowered to take the time needed to listen to members, address their concerns, and ensure they receive appropriate support,” the spokesperson said. “Any tools used in contact center settings support quality assurance efforts and include human review and oversight.”
The friction lands in the middle of contract talks. The California Nurses Association, which represents about 25,000 Kaiser nurses — including roughly 1,000 in call centers — opened negotiations with the system in July, and AI monitoring is on the table.
It is not the union’s first fight over the technology. In April 2024, hundreds of CNA nurses protested outside Kaiser’s San Francisco Medical Center holding signs that read “Trust Nurses Not AI,” demanding a role in AI deployment decisions and patient safeguards. Kaiser said at the time that “AI tools don’t make medical decisions.”
The dispute also follows a bruising and costly stretch of Kaiser labor unrest, including a five-day strike by about 30,000 Alliance of Health Care Unions workers that ended in October 2025.
Nurse surveillance and AI-focused CPT codes are emerging as a bargaining flashpoint as health systems increasingly fold AI into clinical operations. CalMatters reported that California lawmakers are weighing bills that would limit automated monitoring and protect clinicians who override algorithmic recommendations.
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