UCI Needs Better Financial Partner

Finding a partner with better financial-management ability will likely propel UC Irvine forward in fulfilling its primary mission of providing quality patient care (“UCI to Seek Health Alliance,” June 21).

The financial constraint has increasingly reduced the number of indigent patients its medical facility can accommodate and consequently cuts into the learning experience of its medical students and future specialists. With the medical school losing millions year after year, the UC regents have often considered closing this sole medical teaching center in Orange County altogether.

I hope UCI will seriously consider joining up with a health plan headed by physicians instead of MBAs whose primary responsibility is toward the stockholders and their own multimillion-dollar annual compensation. To them, quality is merely Job 3.

DR. JOHN T. CHIU

UC Irvine