The UC Board of Regents Health Services Committee met June 12 to discuss the UC medical system and access to health care.

The meeting came hours after the regents heard public comment and appointed Julio Frenk as the next permanent chancellor of UCLA. During the committee, David Rubin, the executive vice president of UC Health, gave statistics on UC Health’s progress on increasing access to health care and decreasing wait times for outpatient services.

Rubin also said the UC medical system’s visit volume increased by 20% in the last seven years and had over 10 million outpatient visits in 2023. Because of this growth, UC Health is looking for new ways to provide suitable care to the growing numbers of patients, he added.

“Our leaders recognize the need to expand access and improve timeliness of care and don’t shrink from these challenges,” Rubin said. “Improving access is the priority of our time.”

Robert Cherry, the chief medical and quality officer of UCLA Health, said there is a need to increase outpatient service in underserved communities that have limited access to medical care. Cherry said UC health systems could form strategic partnerships with federally qualified health centers and other similar institutions to expand access in underprivileged areas.

The presentation added that ambulatory access can be improved across UC medical centers by creating quicker access to care through video and phone channels. It also highlighted the necessity of improving specialty services like primary care, maternal care and cancer resources.

The committee also discussed the use of Vizient — a program that uses data to analyze a medical center’s access to care — to understand the efficiency and performance of UC medical centers. However, Vizient has certain limitations, including that it only collects data on new adult patients and does not analyze radiology access, said Michael Condrin, the interim chief administrator at UC Davis Medical Center.

Rubin also said UC Health is dedicated to promoting strong data governance across the system, especially in regard to data collected on patients.

“UC has a responsibility to its patients and the community to use this data to improve the practice of medicine,” he said. “It is also imperative we do so in a safe and responsible manner, and this requires extensive and ongoing data maintenance and data governance.”

Cora Han, the chief health data officer at UC Health, said a systemwide presidential task force was created to formulate a list of recommendations to increase safe data governance. The task force recommended the development of “a patient-informed, justice-based model of health data use,” increased community engagement and transparency and the development of a pilot system to capture data sharing agreements, Han added.

She also said it is necessary to assure patients that collected data is used for research on how to improve the patient experience and efficiency of the medical center.

The committee also discussed the implementation of comprehensive reproductive health services at student health centers across UC campuses. Jay Henderson, associate vice president of UC Total Rewards, a department of University human resources, said access to reproductive health services is a key contributor to academic and professional success.

Robin Mills, a health educator at UC Berkeley, said sexual education programs, reaching out to marginalized groups and managing student concerns about abortion confidentiality and affordability are important reproductive health initiatives.

To close the meeting, Kylie Jones, a third-year public health policy student at UC Irvine, spoke about the challenges of finding adequate reproductive health resources on campus. She said regents should mandate access to wellness vending machines, which are found on some UC campuses, including UCLA, but not all.

“This lack of system-wide standardization hinders accessibility,” she said. “Vending machines would provide discrete access to essential products like regular and emergency contraceptives, pregnancy tests and other harm reduction items such as Narcan and fentanyl test strips.”

The next UC Regents meeting will be held at UC San Francisco from July 17 to 18.