Attendance by Officers and Members of the Executive Board:
 

President	Loren Laine	present
President Elect	Harvey Kaslow	present
Secretary	Peter Heseltine	present
Treasurer	Jerry Gates	present
Past President	Harvey Kaslow	present
Member-at-Large	Kathryn Challoner	present
Member-at-Large	Dennis O'Leary	present
Member-at-Large	Rebecca Sokol	present

Representation at the Meeting:
 

Anesthesiology	James Daniel
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology	Frank Markland
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Cell and Neurobiology	Shao-Yao Ying
Children's Hospital
Emergency Medicine	Michael Orlinsky
Family Medicine
Medicine
Molecular Microbiology and Immunology	Joe Landolph
Neurological Surgery	Donald Larsen
Neurology
Norris Medical Library	Patricia Anderson
Obstetrics and Gynecology	Rebecca Sokol
Ophthalmology	Ronald Green
Orthopedics	Thomas Hedman
Otolaryngology	Daniel Kempler
Pathology
Pediatrics
Physiology and Biophysics
Preventive Medicine
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences	Bruce Gross
Radiation Oncology
Radiology
Rancho Los Amigos Hospital
Surgery	Jeffrey Peters
Urology

Also attending: David Hinton, Elaine Kaptein, Joseph Landolph, Henry Slucki

The Meeting was called to order at 12:12 by the President, Loren Laine.

At a time when a quorum was present,  minutes of the July 6, 1999 MFA meeting  were unanimously approved.

The recall election requested by Psychiatry result was reported 14 votes "NO" and 9 votes "YES". The outcome of the election was judged as leaving Bruce Gross incumbent as MFA representative for Psychiatry.

A letter from Lon Schneider was considered by the Assembly. It states that Bruce Gross has been elected consecutively more than twice and so cannot serve as a representative. Dr. Gross did not recall that he had been elected consecutively more than once, but with the concurrence of the Assembly, he agreed to step down if the records show different. Pending the outcome of this enquiry, the election of an alternate representative for Psychiatry will be delayed.

The letter also counseled that the By-laws' insistence that one representative each be elected from the tenured and non-tenured faculty was not representative of many departments. The President, Loren Laine offered to introduce a motion at a later date to change the MFA by-laws to accomodate better representation in the MFA by department faculty.

Under the direction of Mr. Roberto Rodriguez, Executive Director LAC+USC, has issued a dress code for employees. After discussion, the following conclusions were reached:

• The dress code was issued without due consultation with the Faculty.
• While generally supporting a professional appearance, prohibitions against wearing scub suits, loose comfortable clothing and athlectic footware do not take into account the needs of staff on extended shifts, the lack of changing facilities, lockers and showers, the widepsread lack of airconditioning and the overall poor maintainance and cleanliness of the institution.
• The requirement that Faculty seek the permission or approval of a supervisor to wear garb dictated by cultural or religious preference is inappropriate

Ron Kaufman, Chief of Staff presented details of issues related to the LA County USC professional services agreeement (CPSA):

• Proposition A requires that the CPSA be cost-effective. (The alternate feasibility clause was removed in 1991).
• The LA County Deputy County Counsel changed in 1997 and drew attention to the fact that as the CPSA was implemented in 1988, it pre-dated Proposition A and had not been subjected to a cost analysis.
• An analysis was done which found that the houseofficers' salary component of the CPSA was not cost-effective as FICA was paid to USC which was not paid by the County when it employed the residents directly. Although a cost analysis of the USC Faculty portio nof the CPSA was conducted at that time, it was not filed with the Board of Supervisors.
• USC's CPSA differs from those of Harbor UCLA and King Drew in that their faculty receive a direct salary as County employees (patient care) and their CPSA is a stipend for academic duties (supervision of residents). The USC CPSA is not as clearly separable into two components.
• The LAC Auditor Controller conducted an analysis of the PTAMs (Blue Books) for the period 11/1-15/98 and determined that 69% of the FTE's were spent on patient care (including clinical research). When costing this out against the LAC pay schedules for MDs, they concluded that of the County could provide this service for $2.4 million less that the $66.9M value of the CPSA.
• Serious flaws in this analysis include:
• Inclusion of $700K paid to the School of Pharmacy and salaries paid to other non-MD faculty and support staff, not accounted for in the PTAMs.
• The review period included the Veteran's Day holiday which was not coded as salary time off by many USC faculty.
• The County pay schedule does not adequately compensate specialty faculty at prevailing community salary rates. (This was one of the reasons the CPSA was implmented).
• Correction for the holiday alone eliminates the $2.4M difference.
• A "Doomsday" scenario, one where the County would have to purchase the care at one of two salary scales, AAMC or AMGA, indicate that at the 50th percentile, the contract is worth $140M-$150M per annum.
• DHS has requested an additional 30 days to report to the BOS on the cost-effectiveness of the CPSA. No data are yet available from Harbor-UCLA or King-Drew as also requested in the BOS motion of June 1999.

Clive Taylor, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, being unable to attend, this matter was tabled.

Leslie Bernstein, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, not being in attendance, the President, Loren Laine reported that he had met with the incoming and outgoing Presidents of the Academic Senate's and the Sentate Committee considering this matter will not meet until the Fall and their report is unlikely before December or January. Kathy Challoner requested that Clive Taylor report to the MFA on the status and finding of the Committee he
chaired that advised the Dean on tenure for new Faculty. The impact of the Keck Foundation grant on funds available for faculty raises was questioned.

Last year's budget was approximately $2000. Archival storage is urgently needed, as is support for election ballots and transcription.

The President, Loren Laine will appoint a representative.