Listen to the Regents Health Committee Meeting of Oct. 18, 2017

The Regents' Health Services Committee met on October 18th, prior to the full meetings in mid-November. As usual, we preserve the audio of that meeting for the archives. Blog readers will be aware of the fact that the Regents preserve their meeting recordings only for one year, so we preserve them indefinitely. And, of course, as we have noted many, many times, our archiving would be unnecessary if only the Regents would simply leave their recordings up after one year has past. There is no good reason why they don't. The best we have gotten when this question is posed is that they follow the one year rule because that's what CSU does.

OK, with that rant accomplished, we note that at the Health Services Committee, there was discussion of a proposal by UCLA to act as a consultant to the establishment by a real estate company of two hospitals in China. The hospitals would then carry the UCLA brand, although UCLA would not operate them.

This proposal was up for discussion, not approval, with the notion that UCLA would come back with revisions, based on what it heard from the Committee if it decided to go head with the plan. As you might expect, various Regents expressed reservations based on concerns about quality control, reputation, different human subjects rules in China, etc. The dispute over the Dalai Lama giving a commencement address at UC-San Diego was noted. China cancelled scholarships in protest over that speech. UCLA reps at the meeting said the rationale was that the plan would be financially rewarding for the university, that there would be research opportunities, and that we would be helping an important country. The main protection for UCLA would be that it could cancel the agreement under various circumstances.

You can hear the discussion of the proposed UCLA-China deal from roughly minute 47 on for about 35 minutes.

The link for the audo of the entire meeting is below: