IRVINE : Medical Center Plan for UCI Approved

A proposal for a medical research center on the UC Irvine campus will be forwarded to Chancellor Jack W. Peltason after receiving unanimous approval from the school’s Academic Senate on Thursday.

The proposal, a one-page report written by a special committee appointed by the Academic Senate last year, urges that “the highest priority be given to the planning and implementation” of the research center.

An on-campus hospital has met with stiff community opposition, and in 1983 the University of California regents ordered UCI to drop the plan. Community concerns centered on the question of whether a new hospital on campus would drain resources from UCI Medical Center in Orange, which serves many low-income people, at a time when health-care options for the poor are shrinking.

But this time, administrators hope a change in the concept of the medical facility and the support of the faculty will turn the tide in favor of the project.

“I’m hoping that the climate is different because the proposal is fundamentally different,” said Dr. Walter Henry, vice chancellor of health sciences.

Supporters of the new plan don’t even want to call their proposal a hospital, saying that gives a false impression of what the facility would be. Instead, they say the proposed On Campus Center for Health Sciences will deal primarily with specialized care, such as Alzheimer’s disease, and will not include an emergency room.

An on-campus facility is also favored by faculty and students who must now commute 40 minutes to the UCI Medical Center in Orange.

Edward Arquilla, a professor of pathology and chairman of the committee that drafted the proposal, said that people who now need the highly specialized care the proposed facility could provide must now drive to UCLA to receive it.

“In the past, the proposals have been to build a community hospital,” Henry said. “We’re not proposing that.”

Henry also emphasized that the new facility would not compete with UCI Medical Center.

The proposal now goes to Peltason and to an adminstrative committee which discusses priority projects at the university. Another resolution approved Thursday calls for regular reports on the status of the proposal.

The vote came eight months after the a contentious debate in the Academic Senate that ended with the establishment of a committee to study the issue.