Health Care Advisory Committee - 11/27/07

The Health Care Advisory Committee (HCAC) is a non-voting group of students, University Health Services administrators, healthcare providers, and faculty. HCAC serves in a discussion/advisory role for UHS, particularly its budget.

Today's meeting covered a series of updates on UHS projects.

1. Budget update.
The budget will be discussed at the next meeting (1/29) for HCAC input before being presented at SSFC in February. The segregated fee threshold this year for UHS is 3.7%; a greater change than that needs to provide additional justification. Most of the changes from last year to this year involve the physical building move and one-time costs associated with that, including IT needs, equipment purchases, personnel additions, etc.

2. UHS Director search update.
The University is close to finalizing a Search-and-Screen committee to find a new Director of UHS. The committee, containing student representation, will be announced in the next few weeks.

3. Administrative Services Manager search.
An official Search-and-Screen will be postponed until after a Director is announced so the new Director has input. Until then, newly-retired former Director Kathleen Poi will serve in this role in an interim part-time capacity.

4. Electronic Health Records.
UHS has bought software to transfer medical records from a paper form into electronic versions, in addition to bringing various services online. It will be going live in part in January 2008 for scheduling, registration, insurance information, billing, and ordering for labwork, radiology, etc. Patient communication and web-based appointments will be coming in the spring, with the full paperless system in place by June (targeted).

5. Construction update.
UHS will be relocating from the west end of campus to the University Square development in winter 2008/2009 (targeted December/January). Currently, staff are planning for the move, selecting furniture, equipment, etc. Many pieces of older equipment and furniture will not be moved to the new building. Those will go to UW SWAP; it was also suggested that medical equipment be donated to programs like Engineering World Health. Questions about parking arose, especially in terms of handicap accessibility nearby to USquare. The University is not purchasing any parking spots in USquare so choices would be the city lot at USquare or other nearby parking ramps. However, the central location should alleviate some of the parking concerns because more people can walk to the facility.