Tell UC - No to healthcare discrimination! Protect UC healthcare access for ALL Californians!
The University of California, one of the state’s major healthcare providers (we’ve all seen the UCSF hospital shuttles around, and some of us have been in their facilities) and healthcare educators, is weighing an important question: Whether it’s OK for UC to affiliate itself with religiously-affiliated healthcare providers like Dignity Health that discriminate against certain groups of Californians.
They’ve prepared a report analyzing the issue and presenting two options, which boil down to yes or no. Read on for more information, and give your public comment by this Friday, February 21!
Background
The crux of the issue is that UC trains doctors, and part of that training is on-the-job experience—so if a UC doctor is stationed at a religiously-affiliated hospital that doesn’t educate patients about all their reproductive care options, doesn’t do abortions, doesn’t provide gender-affirming healthcare (including HRT and top and/or bottom surgeries), etc., that’s experience they won’t get. That’s the best outcome, assuming they pick up absolutely no stigma of or bias against such healthcare from their time in such facilities—kind of a tall assumption. Either way, this has accumulating long-term effects upon even those healthcare providers who don’t, themselves, have a religious objection to providing certain kinds of care.
It also legitimizes the idea that you can be a doctor who works in a particular field—such as obstetrics—and yet refuse to prescribe or administer certain kinds of healthcare because you’ve prioritized your own religious beliefs (much of which is political dogma from the right wing dressed up as religion in the first place) over the actual needs of the patient. The patient’s needs must always come first, and any medical procedure or prescription that would meet their needs must be open to consideration by both patient and doctor—any would-be doctor who would practice any other way should seek another career.
Following the 2018 fight over Dignity Health, UC’s President, Janet Napolitano, convened a “Working Group on Comprehensive Access” (WGCA) last year. In December, the group came to its conclusions and prepared a “Chair’s Report” outlining findings and recommendations. That report is now public.
In August of 2019 President Napolitano charged members of the Working Group on Comprehensive Access to develop recommendations that “would ensure UC’s values are upheld when its academic health systems collaborate with other health systems” and “to ensure that UC personnel will remain free, without restriction, to advise patients about all treatment options and that patients will have access to comprehensive services.”
Last spring [2018], the University withdrew from negotiations to expand its relationship with Dignity Health after widespread concerns were raised about Dignity Health’s institutional policy restrictions on care, which disproportionately limit care for women and LGBTQ+ patients and prohibit participation in the California End of Life Option Act. As a result of this discussion, the University began addressing the concerns raised by reviewing existing health contracts, implementing interim guidelines for health affiliations with organizations that have policy-based restrictions on care (see Appendix A), and establishing the WGCA.
The WGCA has been informed that UC Health acknowledges that the language used in many current and recently expired contracts with Catholic and Catholic-affiliated health care organizations appears to require UC personnel to adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services(ERDs) (see Appendix B) or Statement of Common Values (SCV) (see Appendix C) and that such language prohibits UC personnel from delivering some types of care and performing certain procedures at non-UC facilities guided by their own personal judgement and the informed decision of the patient. The University expects that its personnel working or training at any clinical site — whether or not it is owned or operated by the University — will always practice medicine and make clinical decisions consistent with applicable legal standards and the standards of care, using their own professional judgment and considering the needs and wishes of each individual patient.
The working group correctly identified that UC really only has two options:
Option 1: Allow affiliations with non-UC entities that prohibit certain services for women and LGBTQ+ people
Option 2: Prohibit affiliations with non-UC entities that prohibit certain services for women and LGBTQ+ people
Option 1 is that of staying neutral in the face of injustice. Option 2 is that of refusing to be complicit, and standing for equal healthcare access for all Californians, including cisgender women and all LGBTQ+ people.
The University is accepting public comment until Friday, February 21. We know from experience that well-informed, original public comment can help influence officials to do the right thing. Now’s the time!