May 22, 2019

To the Board of Regents:

Last week we wrote Chancellor Hawgood and President Napolitano on behalf of the UCSF Faculty Association to oppose the proposed affiliation agreement between UCSF and Dignity Health. We did so, in part, based on a survey of our membership. We did so while acknowledging that the need for UCSF Health to achieve economic viability now and in the future may require UCSF Health to foster agreements with a range of health care institutions. Our opposition is to affiliation with this particular institution.

Because of the importance of the issue and because of some concerns about the representativeness of our membership, we extended the same survey to the entire UCSF faculty. Seven hundred and five faculty responded and the results are nearly identical to those from our membership. Twenty-seven percent of the faculty respondents support the affiliation, 10 percent take a neutral stance, while 63 percent oppose. More than three-hundred faculty added comments on why they voted as they did. Those comments are available on our website.

As we wrote in our letter to Chancellor Hawgood and President Napolitano, the practices of Dignity Health violate the duty of a state institution to serve the needs of its patients based on their medical needs and the best evidence-based treatments of the patients’ choosing. With respect to Dignity Health, the issue is usually framed in terms of reproductive rights of adult women. We think that that is a crucial issue and ought to be determinative in of itself, but this framing ignores the needs of patients of all ages. For adolescents, the issue of access to information about reproductive issues and to the full range of medically-indicated contraception is important. For adults of all ages, the issue of access to effective palliative care is germane.

There is also an opportunity cost in the education of medical students, residents, and clinical fellows. Time spent in clinical environments in which there is no exposure to all medically-indicated treatments short-changes the trainees, meaning that the trainees have to seek the exposure during the times normally devoted to other training opportunities or forego training in the proscribed areas.
We sincerely hope that the University will not persevere to effectuate the agreement with Dignity Health.

Sincerely,

The Board of the UCSF Faculty Association
Member, Council of UC Faculty Associations

cc. University of California San Francisco Chancellor Hawgood
University of California President Napolitano

.