Collective member Davide Carpano is surprised the university doesn’t
want to support the alcohol free zone at the CHE, given what he calls
“rampant alcohol abuse on campuses nationwide.”
The Battle To Save CHE Café
By
Angela Carone
Aired 7/11/14 on KPBS News
Showing posts with label UCSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UCSD. Show all posts
Saturday, July 12, 2014
CHE cafe (Cheap Healthy Eats) at UCSD serves an important function--but UCSD seems to care more about profit
“This is something the university has done before,” explained Davide Carpano, one of the student volunteers who helps run the CHE through a collective. He’s referring to the university’s latest effort to close the CHE (which stands for Cheap Healthy Eats). Administration officials say the building is in need of a fire sprinkler system — to the tune of $700,000 — and is unsafe. They've sent the collective an eviction notice.
“We actually have an article from the 1980s, where the university used the exact same pretexts and the exact same inflated numbers,” said Carpano.
On a campus known for cutting edge research and modern architecture, the CHE Café feels like something out of the 1960s, though the venue dates to 1980. Its small wooden building is covered in murals, some of them by well-known muralists, featuring activists like Che Guevara and Angela Davis.
Music fans, especially of punk and hardcore, have flocked to the CHE over the years to see bands they couldn’t see elsewhere. Green Day played there before they became famous. So did Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.
He said university officials have never liked what the CHE stands for, so there’s always some renewed effort to shut it down.
The CHE collective insists the fire sprinkler system was only recommended, not mandatory. The UCSD Fire Marshall would not comment for this story.
The collective has been fighting back, most notably by filing a lawsuit on Monday against the university, their landlord, for breach of contract. They also filed and won a restraining order against the university so they can stay in the building until the lawsuit is resolved. They plan to continue booking shows until September.
Money to pay for the fire sprinkler system would normally come from student fees. Sammy Chang chaired the student board that decides how student fees should be spent. He says only a small portion of UCSD students go to the CHE Café, so even though it has this unique history on campus, it’s not a priority. “We’re still obligated to the students who pay the fee who don’t really fully understand all of the CHE’s traditions and what the CHE Café is,” explained Chang. “Only 2 percent of the students even use the CHE Café,” he added. That's based on a survey conducted by the university.
Chang said most students use the spacious Price Center, where there are restaurants and lounges. In the face of budget deficits, he said they have to put the money where the most students are.
Andrea Carter, the lawyer representing the CHE’s fight to stay open, said this is about the university opting to make a profit. The CHE’s rent is low ($80 a month) and Carter said the university could make more money by renting the land to a private vendor.
“The social spaces that the university now seems to prefer are ones that are privately operated, profit-driven and not dedicated to providing practical education opportunities,” said Carter.
She sees the recent decision to allow a Starbucks on campus as emblematic of the trend.
The CHE Café, however, has not been a model tenant. They are close to $4,000 behind in rent and utilities. In years past, they’ve let their insurance payments lapse and lost their non-profit status for not filing tax forms.
Representatives for the collective admit keeping up with the rent was tough because they focused on paying a hefty insurance bill. They say they’ve never been a priority at the university, despite operating a historic building that was once the student center and the heart of campus.
“Overall this space has not been given the maintenance it deserves over the last 34 years,” said Rene Vera, another CHE cooperative member. “If they would just put $10,000 into it every couple of years, or maybe a $50,000 renovation, this would all be fixed right now and it wouldn’t be this big lump sum come due.”
Those fighting to save the CHE Café have nostalgia on their side. Music lovers, like Charles Henry Peckham, insist the music scene at the CHE is rare. “There’s not anything like the CHE that I have ever seen and I’ve been going to shows for a long time,” said the Cal State East Bay grad.
Collective member Davide Carpano is surprised the university doesn’t want to support the alcohol free zone at the CHE, given what he calls “rampant alcohol abuse on campuses nationwide.”
Friday, June 06, 2014
UCSD gives consent for sharing medical records without patient approval
I got an interesting letter from UCSD three days ago. It told me that I had consented to share my electronic medical records.
The trouble is--I had NOT given my consent. I never signed a consent form. I never clicked a box on the Internet agreeing to share my records.
And the letter from UCSD did NOT arrive in my home mailbox or even in my email. It was purely by chance that I found it on MyUCSDChart—NOT among the MyChart emails. If it had been among the MyChart emails, I would have received an alert about it in my regular email.
UCSD was definitely NOT trying to make sure that I found out about my “consent”.
Today, each time I have clicked on the link about sharing electronic medical records on MyUCSDChart, I found myself unceremoniously thrown back to the sign-in page. Automatically signed out. They really don't like it when I click on the link!
UCSD seems to be remarkably fond of both signing me in and signing me out--without my involvement--whenever it feels like it.
I found this page on the UCSD site about sharing electronic records. It seems that I am now part of two databases: The San Diego Beacon Health Information Exchange, and something called Care Everywhere.
It's not that I want to keep my records secret. In fact, I think sharing electronic records is basically a good idea. It's just that I've had problems with health providers hiding my own test results from me, so I'm sensitive about doctors violating the law regarding medical records.
Apparently the VA is also part of this system, but the VA has a more transparent consent process.
I've heard of falsified medical records, but this is the first time I heard of a falsified consent for release of medical records.
I found some interesting stuff about UCSD's informed consent process for patients in research projects:
Tufts Medical Center sued for faxing patient records without consent
July 15, 2011
By Karen Cheung-Larivee
FierceHealthcare
Tufts Medical Center in Boston faces a lawsuit after a patient said the hospital faxed her medical records to her workplace without her consent, causing her embarrassment, reports The Boston Globe yesterday.
"I feel like I might have walked in (the office) naked," said patient Kimberly White.
White requested Tufts to send a form for a disability claim, but instead the hospital allegedly sent four pages of medical records about her hysterectomy to a shared fax machine at her workplace.
White filed a complaint in Plymouth County Superior Court. The hospital denies any wrongdoing, according to the article.
Tufts spokeswoman Julie Jette said, "In this matter, we complied with a patient's request to share information. We firmly believe we responded to the patient's request appropriately."
"I can't go back there," White said. "I am so embarrassed. ... I couldn't live with knowing what these people knew about me."
Earlier this year, another Boston hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, faced accusations that an employee lost records of 192 patients on the subway. The hospital in February settled the federal case for $1 million, according to the article.
UCLA HIPAA VIOLATIONS
UCLA Health System pays $865G to settle HIPAA violation charges
July 8, 2011
FierceHealthIT
By Ken Terry
UCLA Health System has agreed to pay a fine of $865,000 and to develop a correction action plan to settle potential HIPAA privacy violations involving improper disclosures of medical records at its three hospitals, the federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) reports.
OCR launched the investigation in 2009, following complaints by two unnamed celebrities that their medical records had been compromised. The government probe revealed that from 2005 to 2008, "unauthorized employees repeatedly looked at the electronic protected health information of numerous other UCLAHS patients," according to an OCR press release.
The Los Angeles Times reports that violations allegedly occurred at all three UCLAHS hospitals: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center, and Orthopaedic Hospital and Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, which are regarded as a single unit.
The hospital had disclosed in April 2008 that it had discovered that several employees had snooped into the patient records of dozens of celebrities, including Britney Spears, Tom Cruise and Maria Shriver.
When the alleged violations came to light in 2008, the California legislature passed a law that imposed escalating fines on hospitals for patient privacy breaches. The state fined UCLAHS $95,000 in 2009, reportedly in connection with the medical records of the late Michael Jackson.
The UCLAHS settlement with OCR is much smaller than previous HIPAA settlements, including those involving CVS Caremark ($2.25 million) and Rite Aid ($1 million).
As part of its settlement, UCLAHS agreed to institute new security and privacy policies, improve employee training, take action against employees who violate privacy rules, and designate an independent monitor to oversee compliance.
In a statement, UCLAHS said, "The UCLA Health System considers patient confidentiality a critical part of our mission of patient care, teaching and research. Over the past three years, we have worked diligently to strengthen our staff training, implement enhanced data security systems and increase our auditing capabilities."
MEDICAL ETHICS--RESEARCH ON MEDICAL RECORDS WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT
J Law Med Ethics. 2008 Fall;36(3):560-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2008.304.x.
Research on medical records without informed consent.
Miller FG.
Observational research involving access to personally identifiable data in medical records has often been conducted without informed consent, owing to practical barriers to soliciting consent and concerns about selection bias. Nevertheless, medical records research without informed consent appears to conflict with basic ethical norms relating to clinical research and personal privacy. This article analyzes the scope of these norms and provides an ethical justification for research using personally identifiable medical information without consent.
PMID: 18840249 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
The trouble is--I had NOT given my consent. I never signed a consent form. I never clicked a box on the Internet agreeing to share my records.
And the letter from UCSD did NOT arrive in my home mailbox or even in my email. It was purely by chance that I found it on MyUCSDChart—NOT among the MyChart emails. If it had been among the MyChart emails, I would have received an alert about it in my regular email.
UCSD was definitely NOT trying to make sure that I found out about my “consent”.
Today, each time I have clicked on the link about sharing electronic medical records on MyUCSDChart, I found myself unceremoniously thrown back to the sign-in page. Automatically signed out. They really don't like it when I click on the link!
UCSD seems to be remarkably fond of both signing me in and signing me out--without my involvement--whenever it feels like it.
I found this page on the UCSD site about sharing electronic records. It seems that I am now part of two databases: The San Diego Beacon Health Information Exchange, and something called Care Everywhere.
It's not that I want to keep my records secret. In fact, I think sharing electronic records is basically a good idea. It's just that I've had problems with health providers hiding my own test results from me, so I'm sensitive about doctors violating the law regarding medical records.
Apparently the VA is also part of this system, but the VA has a more transparent consent process.
I've heard of falsified medical records, but this is the first time I heard of a falsified consent for release of medical records.
I found some interesting stuff about UCSD's informed consent process for patients in research projects:
iDASH Integrating Data for Analysis, Anonymization and SHaringHOSPITAL FAXED MEDICAL RECORDS TO PATIENT'S WORKPLACE
Informed Consent
Paper Consent versus Electronic Consent
Traditionally, paper-based consent has been the medium through which researchers and physicians conducted the informed consent process. The paper-based process consists of giving a hard copy consent form to a patient for him or her to review. Then a care provider answers any questions from the patient and in some cases assists the patient in reviewing the paper consent forms. The issues surrounding this procedure are that the paper-based consent form tends to be long and monotonous, and the retrieval of paper forms are often time consuming.
The new electronic consent forms use tablets or computers as the medium for communicating information and seeking consent from the patient...The iDASH team is also currently working on two systems, iCONS and iCONCUR, which are intended for such open source use in the future.
iDASH electronic informed consent management system
iCONS is a system currently being tested in a clinical trials environment at Moores Cancer Center Biorepository. The system supports informed consent electronically by enhancing the consent process for patients and researchers by acting as a consent broker and by adding multimedia aspects to the process. This consent process is opt-in, meaning no patient information is shared with researchers until the patient specifies what specific information he or she would like to share with researchers. The iCONS system creates a permission ontology to model the consent choices of the patient to assist in the process of releasing data and specimens to researchers for their consented uses.
iCONCUR is a pilot study within the University of California - San Diego Health System. This system transforms the sharing of electronic records from the opt-out system that is currently in place, meaning a patient’s record is automatically entered into the system unless the patient specifically requests to have their records taken out, to an opt-in system. The tool presents the patient with a taxonomy of his or her medical record allowing the patient to dictate what parts of the medical record to share and with whom it may be shared with.
Tufts Medical Center sued for faxing patient records without consent
July 15, 2011
By Karen Cheung-Larivee
FierceHealthcare
Tufts Medical Center in Boston faces a lawsuit after a patient said the hospital faxed her medical records to her workplace without her consent, causing her embarrassment, reports The Boston Globe yesterday.
"I feel like I might have walked in (the office) naked," said patient Kimberly White.
White requested Tufts to send a form for a disability claim, but instead the hospital allegedly sent four pages of medical records about her hysterectomy to a shared fax machine at her workplace.
White filed a complaint in Plymouth County Superior Court. The hospital denies any wrongdoing, according to the article.
Tufts spokeswoman Julie Jette said, "In this matter, we complied with a patient's request to share information. We firmly believe we responded to the patient's request appropriately."
"I can't go back there," White said. "I am so embarrassed. ... I couldn't live with knowing what these people knew about me."
Earlier this year, another Boston hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, faced accusations that an employee lost records of 192 patients on the subway. The hospital in February settled the federal case for $1 million, according to the article.
UCLA HIPAA VIOLATIONS
UCLA Health System pays $865G to settle HIPAA violation charges
July 8, 2011
FierceHealthIT
By Ken Terry
UCLA Health System has agreed to pay a fine of $865,000 and to develop a correction action plan to settle potential HIPAA privacy violations involving improper disclosures of medical records at its three hospitals, the federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) reports.
OCR launched the investigation in 2009, following complaints by two unnamed celebrities that their medical records had been compromised. The government probe revealed that from 2005 to 2008, "unauthorized employees repeatedly looked at the electronic protected health information of numerous other UCLAHS patients," according to an OCR press release.
The Los Angeles Times reports that violations allegedly occurred at all three UCLAHS hospitals: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center, and Orthopaedic Hospital and Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, which are regarded as a single unit.
The hospital had disclosed in April 2008 that it had discovered that several employees had snooped into the patient records of dozens of celebrities, including Britney Spears, Tom Cruise and Maria Shriver.
When the alleged violations came to light in 2008, the California legislature passed a law that imposed escalating fines on hospitals for patient privacy breaches. The state fined UCLAHS $95,000 in 2009, reportedly in connection with the medical records of the late Michael Jackson.
The UCLAHS settlement with OCR is much smaller than previous HIPAA settlements, including those involving CVS Caremark ($2.25 million) and Rite Aid ($1 million).
As part of its settlement, UCLAHS agreed to institute new security and privacy policies, improve employee training, take action against employees who violate privacy rules, and designate an independent monitor to oversee compliance.
In a statement, UCLAHS said, "The UCLA Health System considers patient confidentiality a critical part of our mission of patient care, teaching and research. Over the past three years, we have worked diligently to strengthen our staff training, implement enhanced data security systems and increase our auditing capabilities."
MEDICAL ETHICS--RESEARCH ON MEDICAL RECORDS WITHOUT INFORMED CONSENT
J Law Med Ethics. 2008 Fall;36(3):560-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2008.304.x.
Research on medical records without informed consent.
Miller FG.
Observational research involving access to personally identifiable data in medical records has often been conducted without informed consent, owing to practical barriers to soliciting consent and concerns about selection bias. Nevertheless, medical records research without informed consent appears to conflict with basic ethical norms relating to clinical research and personal privacy. This article analyzes the scope of these norms and provides an ethical justification for research using personally identifiable medical information without consent.
PMID: 18840249 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Professors object to remains over 9,000 years old being given to Kumeyaay
Since the discovery of Kennewick Man, our understanding of the ancestry of indigenous Americans has increased in complexity. Some believed that Kennewick Man was Caucasoid. It was suggested that he might be related to the Ainu people of Japan. And of course, most of the people of the Americas didn't stay in one place for thousands of years. They tended to move around. But it now seems that American Indian ancestry might be more mixed than we once believed.
White et al v. University of California: Motions to Dismiss Granted
UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Oct. 12, 2012
On October 9, 2012, the federal District Court in San Francisco granted the University’s motion to dismiss the White v. UC lawsuit without leave to amend (see PDF below). This lawsuit was filed by three UC professors to prevent UCSD from transferring certain very old remains (estimated to be 9000-10,000 years old) to a local tribe. Among other things, the parties dispute whether such a transfer is required under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). UC moved to dismiss the complaint on procedural grounds, primarily arguing that the tribes are necessary parties to the suit given their interest in the remains and the possibility of inconsistent rulings against the University, but, because they are independent sovereigns, they are immune from suit and therefore the suit must be dismissed. The Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee (KCRC), which was also sued by Plaintiffs, made a similar argument.
UC has agreed to Plaintiffs’ request to maintain the status quo while they decide whether to appeal. Also, the separate case filed by KCRC against the University is still pending in federal court in San Diego and is stayed while the injunction in the White case is in place. Plaintiffs have 30 days to file a notice of appeal.
White et al v. University of California: Motions to Dismiss Granted
UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Oct. 12, 2012
On October 9, 2012, the federal District Court in San Francisco granted the University’s motion to dismiss the White v. UC lawsuit without leave to amend (see PDF below). This lawsuit was filed by three UC professors to prevent UCSD from transferring certain very old remains (estimated to be 9000-10,000 years old) to a local tribe. Among other things, the parties dispute whether such a transfer is required under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). UC moved to dismiss the complaint on procedural grounds, primarily arguing that the tribes are necessary parties to the suit given their interest in the remains and the possibility of inconsistent rulings against the University, but, because they are independent sovereigns, they are immune from suit and therefore the suit must be dismissed. The Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee (KCRC), which was also sued by Plaintiffs, made a similar argument.
UC has agreed to Plaintiffs’ request to maintain the status quo while they decide whether to appeal. Also, the separate case filed by KCRC against the University is still pending in federal court in San Diego and is stayed while the injunction in the White case is in place. Plaintiffs have 30 days to file a notice of appeal.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
UCSD designs robots to teach students
By DARRYN BENNETT
Voice of San DiegoJuly 29, 2008
"...A third year computer science graduate student, Whitehill and his colleagues are working to make a new generation of robots that would be effective and responsive teachers. They believe the key is to train them to recognize and respond to facial expressions, the way humans do naturally. Whitehill described the demonstration, part of his research at the University of California, San Diego's Machine Perception Laboratory, as "almost like having a remote control built into your face."...
Voice of San DiegoJuly 29, 2008
"...A third year computer science graduate student, Whitehill and his colleagues are working to make a new generation of robots that would be effective and responsive teachers. They believe the key is to train them to recognize and respond to facial expressions, the way humans do naturally. Whitehill described the demonstration, part of his research at the University of California, San Diego's Machine Perception Laboratory, as "almost like having a remote control built into your face."...
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