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A community review board convened by the Oregon Health Authority to review Oregon Health & Science University’s proposed acquisition of Legacy Health voted unanimously to reject the transaction.
The board’s decision isn’t binding on OHA’s Health Care Marketplace Oversight program. Rather, it will be one input among many as HCMO determines whether the merger can go forward.
Five of the original nine members of the review board joined a Zoom call for the vote today. Two members resigned last week after a Portland resident raised questions about whether they had conflicts of interest. Another had withdrawn from the board earlier, and a fourth didn’t respond on Zoom when asked for her vote.
Review board members said they had concerns about costs rising after the purchase, something that’s common during health care consolidation, according to academic studies. Others talked about protections for employees.
“Increasing prices reduces access and affects equity,” board member Teresa Goodell said during deliberations. “There is abundant scientific evidence for this.”
Both OHSU and unions representing workers there and at Legacy said they disagreed with the review board’s decision.
“The final decision is in the hands of OHA,” Meg Niemi, president of Service Employees International Union Local 49, said in a statement. “We hope they choose a path where beds at Legacy hospitals don’t go unstaffed—and where OHSU patients aren’t being seen in hallways, or worse, still waiting to get an appointment. Oregon must put patients first.”
The Oregon Nurses Association said it was “disappointed” by the vote but “remains confident that this deal will be finalized.”
An OHSU spokeswoman said the academic medical center had been “transparent and responsive” to the review board. “We look forward to continued review of our detailed filing, which demonstrates the access and quality of care that OHSU and Legacy will bring to Oregonians,” she said.
The board held two rounds of voting, asking members to approve the transaction, approve it with conditions, or disapprove it. In the first round, two members voted to approve it with conditions. One of them, Wendi Martin, said she was worried about what would happen to Legacy if the deal didn’t go through.
“I do believe that by not doing this, unless Legacy has a another plan, we will see a reduction in services,” Martin said.
Both OHSU and Legacy have lost money at various points in recent years because of higher post-pandemic costs for supplies and wages. Legacy’s situation is widely considered to be more dire.
Martin changed her vote in the second round, making the disapproval unanimous. Others reasoned that Legacy would find another savior.
“Legacy is too big to fail,” board member Howard Cohen said. “The state will step in, or someone will step in to help them.”
The fate of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which is run by OHSU, came up in deliberations as well. Animal right groups led by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have lobbied the review board to include the primate center in its calculus.
Both groups say that research on primates is cruel, outmoded and unnecessary. OHSU says its critical to discovering lifesaving treatments.
Had he voted to approve the transaction with conditions, Cohen said one of them would be to have a safety consultant review practices at the primate center.
PETA lauded the review board’s decision.
“OHSU has clearly lost the trust of the public and nothing exemplifies that more than the university’s insistence on tormenting monkeys in pointless experiments,” PETA’s senior vice president of laboratory investigations Kathy Guillermo said in a statement. “Nearly 10,000 Oregonians told the Community Review Board that the primate center must close, and OHSU, instead of listening, defended the horrific studies that lead to the deaths of 900 monkeys every year.”
The next step is for staff at OHA to write a report summarizing the decision. The board must approve it at a meeting on April 16.
The two board members who left amid questions about conflicts of interest are Joanna Mott, who until December was provost and vice president for academic affairs of the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls, and Jerry Dalnes, business-development manager at office-furniture outlet Harris WorkSystems.
OHA referred both cases to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for evaluation. The commission ruled that Dalnes, whose firm sells furniture to health care organizations, had a “potential” conflict of interest. Mott had neither an “actual” or “potential” conflict, the commission said. Both resigned, nonetheless.