Watch the Afternoon Session of the Regents of June 23, 2021

Yesterday, we posted a piece about the morning session of the special Regents meeting of June 23rd.* Our post included an indefinite-duration link to the recording of the session since the Regents "archive" their recordings for only one year. The meeting was unusual, not because some committees were meeting off-cycle, but because the full board also was meeting. And the main end-product of the meeting was the relationship between UC Health and Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital chain that won't perform certain procedures such as abortion on religious grounds. As previously posted, the morning session had a public comment period which was mainly focused on the Dignity Health matter.

Today, we post about the afternoon session which - after dealing with an executive appointment - contained the full board's deliberations on a proposed new arrangement with Dignity Health (and any other such provider) with various stipulations from UC. The most active regent in the discussion was the board chair, John Pérez, who proposed a series of amendments to the recommendations of UC president Drake. A screenshot of the amendments (which were somewhat modified during the discussion) is below.

After discussion, President Drake accepted the amendments and the board voted - with one abstention - to adopt them. Basically, they take effect in late 2023.

From the San Francisco Chronicle: University of California Regents, facing criticism for contracts with religious hospitals that refuse to provide abortions, sterilizations or transgender surgery, adopted a new policy Wednesday that retains the contracts but requires the hospitals to let UC physicians perform those procedures when patients can’t be transferred safely to another hospital. The university is fighting legislation by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, that would require it to end contracts with religious health facilities — like Dignity Health, California’s largest hospital chain — unless the hospitals changed their policies or did not apply them to UC physicians and students working there.

Wednesday’s regents vote moves in that direction, though it does not require termination of any of the contracts the university says it has with 77 hospitals and other health facilities in California. UC officials say the contracts allow its medical staff to provide care for 35,000 patients, many of them low-income Californians with little access to hospital treatment...

The action allows new contracts only with health care providers that offer their services to all patients, without discrimination, Pérez said. It would not require the hospital’s own staff to perform all medical procedures, but would allow UC personnel at the facilities to do so. And if a patient needed a procedure, such as a hysterectomy or delivery of an ectopic pregnancy, and could not be safely transferred, UC staff would be allowed to perform it at the hospital. The university would also have to terminate existing contracts with hospitals that do not comply with the policy by the end of 2023, Pérez said. UC President Michael Drake, who initially proposed less-extensive changes to the current contracts, endorsed Pérez’s amendments. So did Wiener...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Regents-alter-policy-with-religious-hospitals-16270214.php.

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Our link to the recording can be found at:

https://archive.org/details/regents-governance-committee-board-6-23-21-pm.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2021/06/watch-regents-special-session-morning.html.