empathy can create. when you're positive and committed to using that energy, >> we now call the health services board meeting for march 23, 2023. it's a follow-up effort from our previously scheduled meeting of march 9th of this year. will everyone please stand and join me in the "pledge of allegiance". >> i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation, under fwod indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> thank you, madam secretary please call roll. >> scott. >> present. >> and vice president is excused. commissioner breslin. >> here. >> commissioner caning is executioned. commissioner bonbee. >> present. >> and commissioner monski. >> present. >> with that, we have a quorum. >> we have a quorum and i'm going to call privilege of the chair by calling item 5 for being the next item and i'll explain why. i do remind commission thaerz we have another week or so before we're due to comply with

our filing of our form 700 and ethics training for the city so. if you have not completed those and i am not looking to my left or right if you have or not, but if you haven't, please do so by the 30th of april. the reason for the present report being called at this time, is because there is been some newly issue guidance for city policy bodies beginning on the first of march. the background is that for nearly three years, special rules necessitated by the covid-19 public health emergency have governored the meets of city policy body such as the health service system. the governor announced that the state wide emergency declared

on march the 4, 2020, it ended on february 28th, 2023. and beginning march first, 2023, the state wide emergency order ended and the mayor's order regarding public meetings were terminated. the office of the city administrator for city poly bodies and i didn't realize that we had such an entity here in san francisco but we do, in consultation with the mayor's office of disability met in february to provide advise on remote public comment proceedings and protocols for poly bodies such as the hhs board. and they advised the following. while not required by state or local public meeting laws, policy bodies are advised provide additional time, limited remote public comment for members of the public who

are be requesting an accommodation underfed ral a d.a. laws. this is just a time limit allowance civil civic participation while staffing challenges. the amount of time allowed for remote public comment will be is set by the policy body in this case and we'll get to our application of this in a moment, in advance of any meeting, and will be noticed to the on the public agenda. all public policy bodies must allow remote public comment for members of the public who are unable to provide public comment in-person due to disability. so with this advise and in consultation with our council,

the health service port will do the following. one, offer a hybrid meeting format using the city's universal platform web ex-that's the current platform. two include instructions for public comment and written public comment on all agenda sxz web pages. three, each agenda item will have at least 30 minutes of total, 30 minutes at least 30 minutes total of time limited remote public comment. public comment will conclude after all individuals have spoken and there is no need to wait for the 30 minutes to expire before moving on to the next item. each speaker will be allowed three minutes to comment in length unless the board president deems new public comment time limits during the

meeting and that's not the departure from anything we've done in the past if we've had an item which there is a large amount of public comment, we have in the past limited to a minute or two minutes depending on the amount of people who have asked to speak. four, in-person public comment will be heard first followed by remote public comment. and then lastly, number 5, remote comment instructions will be read allowed and displayed at the beginning of the meeting at the beginning of the meeting and in brief reminders for each agenda item. if you recall in our prior board meetings, we read through every each time, the instruction and so forth and so forth, we will not be doing that for every item.

but there may be periodic reminders so that the public can comment remotely going forward. and i think, i thank the board secretary for her participation in this city wide consultation process and also direct for her leadership in this area as we go forward. and i think that it will a newer to our benefit as we conduct the business of the board on behalf of the members. so with that, i would like to ask is there any question from the board members about the new guidance that we've been given? >> i read those before but i'm wondering how do you know that somebody has a disability, they just say i have a disability and i want to participate today. >> i'll differ to the secretary because this item was brought up in the deliberation. so please. >> thank you, president scott,

commissioner, if anyone of the public would like to seek accommodations, they would contact myself at the health service dot board email or call and they would request that for me. and i would be able to give them provide the services. >> do they need medical proof. >> it's something that i have certain language that i can ask for privacy. but if i had a question i would go to the disability services and be able to ask. >> a lot of people can just call in and say. >> we would follow whatever the department of services provides. >> and commissioner breslin if i can ask you to bring your microphone a little closer. >> sorry. >> thank you, commissioner savanski. >> my other concern is the health system has naemz are

living all over this country, not just in san francisco. so i'm not sure how much may monitor the public comment. but the remote public comment would be something that would be available to any and all members. so while there may be some concern to ada accommodation which may or may not be available or some may not be able to share that information, because of the board membership because we actually have members living internationally, we need to maintain the remote public comment just for the sake of our members and not question whether or not ada is the issue but just allow them access based on the membership. thank you. >> thank you, are there any other comments.

if not, i'll now call for public comment on the president's report. >> thank you, president scott. in the new format. >> yes, so i'll be reading a fuller script. so remote public comment is available on sf gov. tv, the health service board welcomes participation. there will be an opportunity to comment on each agenda. for anyone waiting in-person, you're welcome to approach the podium now. each speaker will be allowed three minutes. all public comment are to be made concerning the agenda item presented. a caller may ask questions from the body but there is no obligation to answer. membersed of the public

attending the phone p can dial this by dialing 415-655-0001, when prompted use code 2516 then press pound. you'll be prompted to enter the webinar password which is 115. for those watching the meeting on webex, press on the raised hand to unmute. when you're unmuted, the system will unmute you. once you hear the announcement me say welcome, you can begin speaker. please click on the raised hand

icon to lower your hand. you may remain anonymous,. when your three minutes have ended, i'll say thank you for your call and i'll unmute the next caller. we want to say thank you to sf gov. services. we will begin with in-person public comment. and nobody has approached our podium. so we'll go to remotel public comment. our moderator will let us know if we have anyone. >> madam secretary, we have two callers on the phone line. zero are on the queue. a reminder to all callers on the line, you must dial star-3 now if you wish to enter the queue. we'll wait five more seconds and then close public comment.

board secretary there are still no callers at this time. >> thank you, moderator, hearing no public callers, public comment is now closeds. >> thank you, we'll now move to 3. >> item 3 is general public comment. seeing that we just read our full instructions, just a brief reminders in case anyone joined. the instructions were just read. in public will be first. for those callers on the line, please press star-3 to be added to the queue. no one has approached the podium, so we'll move to our virtual comment. and our moderator will let us know if there are any public comments on the virtual queue. >> board secretary, we have three callers on the phone line, zero have entered the public queue at this time.

a reminder to all callers, you must dial star-3 now if you wish to enter the public comment. we'll wait five seconds and then close public comment. >> thank you, hearing none, the public comment is now closed. >> that was an opportunity for public co. and as we go forward, you know there is an opportunity for public comment on each of the items that come before this board. we'll now move to item 4. >> thank you, president scott, agenda number 4 is approval with possible modifications of the meetings of the minutes set below.

>> just to be clear as to what we're approving, the attached documents on the published site of meeting of february 6 for finance and budget committee and february 6 for the governorance committee, the minutes of those two meetings. we passed as a part of the action item for these committees, the resulting work efforts, if you will and recommendations from both of those committees at the february 9th general board meeting. we should have also included that those approvals included the minutes of those respective committees that have met on february 6th.

so what we will be approving today, is the february 9th regular board meeting minutes as the action item for this item. so are there any additions, edits or corrections to the regular board meetings of february 9th from members of the board? if not, i'm willing to entertain a motion. >> is move to proof the february 9 health service board regular meetings. >> okay, properly moved and seconded that we approve the regular meeting minutes of the board for february the 9th. are there any questions from the board members? if not, we will open this up for public comment.

>> thank you, president scott. public comment is now opened. instructions are being on the screen. in-person public comment will be first. and then remote public comment. we'll move on to our virtual public comment and our moderator will let us know if there is anybody in the queue at this time. moderator are you seeing any public callers in the queue at this time? >> yes, board secretary, please let me know if you can hear my voice coming through. >> lloyd examine clear. >> we have three callers on the phone line, zero have entered the public comment at this time.

i will indicate when there are no more callers on the queue. a reminder to callers on the line, you must press star-3 now if you wish to enter public comment. we'll wait 5 seconds and then close public comment. board secretary there are still no callers at this time. >> thank you, moderator hearing no further callers. public comment is now closed. >> thank you, we're now ready to vote. all those in favor, signify by saying aye. >> aye. >> all those opposed. >> aye. >> euro posed? you're opposed? >> do we have to maintain roll call votes on the hybrid. >> i believe so. >> all right, we will roll roll

call vote in this. we're all in new territory. >> roll call. >> president scott. >> aye. >> res lin. >> aye. >> commissioner followans beyonce? >> yes. >> that something that we have to do is a roll call, smz something that we have to do before the next meeting. >> it was intended for the hybrid format. but i'll clarify. >> maybe you don't have. >> we'll claire that for next meeting. for this meeting, we'll have a roll call for each action item. with that, we'll move to director's report. item 6. >> thank you, president scott. this is presented by abby shfsn

executive director. >> good afternoon, i can be brief today. the i do want to remind everyone that we are in a blackout period 'cause we are in negotiations with all of our vendors at this time including our actuary services. we continue to to work with the school services. it will be nice to say that we've got that taken care of. >> if i may ask on this item. >> yes. >> this is been a month's long effort by all the parties involved. it would be helpful to get some

status report about where this process is. i consider the school board staff, school staff and unified school district to be a very important component of the system and to have the possibility paycheck to paycheck that people may be missing payments or getting in the meat grinder of the system is disturbing and this is been at least six months that you've been saying about the same thing. so my hope is that we can get an update from either representative of the school district or those parties that are working on this to see when there may be some resolution, i'm making that as a general request and i'll say the relationships dynamic that that will ininquire.

inquire. >> we'll try to get that. we're tremendously under staffed it's very complicated. so we are, we do reach out not a pretty regular basis and hear from them when they need our help. >> all right. thank you. >> may i ask, have any members have impacted with the regard to benefit access? do we know? >> that's why we're at the table, because they have other problems that are important but they're not our problems. we get involved to try to determine and state it in a way that makes sense. >> yeah, it's additional work and we're down staffing our

member services but i think, you know, it's that's not the concern. the concern is that they continue to optimize the system that they fought. and that we stay at the table with them to ensure that the members gets instated, administer the way it's designed to be administered. >> thank you. >> can i ask this brief follow pickup. what will is the impact on our call in terms of calls from, uni fied district employees. is it on going issue or are they all comfortable with the status? >> yeah, if ray is comfortable. >> come to the mic on that, we did set up a service within the phone tree so that they could get to us in a clearer path. and the numbers are varied so

i'm not sure where they are today. >> commissioner, there is a impact to our, to our unit in member services. i don't have exact numbers. but working with the school district our goal is to address the situations before the members need to call so we're trying to do a more systematic approach where we get the school district and get them reported so we can work on them before it requires a member inquiry. we have dedicated staff dedicated to school district issues, a large portion of the workload is related to member issues from the school district. but again our goal is to minimize the effort on the part of the member, but the issue continue to arise. and so we were just notified last week and we had a

follow-up call with leadership from school district today. where, due to a reported issue on the part of the pay roll system, members who were qualified for benefits based upon working 1040 hours were not correctly identified and therefore we have about 75 members that we'll need to on board as quickly as possible on a retroactive basis which increases the amount of work that is required. in addition there are some members that were not identified that were eligible due to the aca. and those probably 35 additional members. so we'll work on those as well. but again all of these issues, are resulting from issues up stream, not related to just benefits. this is related to hours being reported in these cases to the retirement system which were

not caught because the interface file between the school district and the retirement system was not working. and so, so these issues need to be traced back and fixed before they even get to you know, what is impacting us primarily which is our interface value between our system and the school district. so it will be, you mentioned that this is a month long effort, it's going to be month long before you know, we're able to even address kind of our issues related to our interface between us and them. so they need to tackle those up stream issues first before they can focus on you know, what we're primarily concerned with you is our interface file. but that by no means that these other up stream issues are not impacting the members. so we continue to work with them, we will work with them and provoid them with whatever

help they need to work through these issues and the hopes that once we get six months out from now, we're able to say, we're almost past the situation. >> all right. thank you, chief operating officer for that communication. and my hope is that we continue to be as responsive and anticipateory as you have. is want to thank the specialized staff that are working on these issues on behalf of the members. thank you. >> thank you, for that discussion. moving forward in the director's report in our racial equity and cultural celebrations, i do want to just acknowledge that it is women's history month and international women's day and we had an

employee appreciation day for our unit to celebrate our employees and had a long overdue potluck which sounds small but the socialization that we all missed through the pandemic, it was nice to get together. we do continue to to carry out the audit plan that we presented here to the board. and we did achieve a rebate about 98,000 dollars by blue shield and that will be deposited into the trust. the hiring of our staff, we're continuing to we're begin to go

breakthrough the log jam. we're successful at hr. we funded additional support from hr to help with the recruitment, many recruitment activities that take place in the hiring process. and we're starting to fill the positions so we're happy to do that, i was pleased to sign two offer letters yesterday, it's been a while. there is also a memo that jessica put together with all of our health plans to try to make sense how the unwinding of all the emergency declarations at a federal state and local level and the health plans are telling us what they know today

about how things are going to continue to unravel. i just want to cautious everyone that you should always check so that you're not surprised in how things work for you in your particular health plan. but in general things are moving to the health plans to be responsible for the vaccines and testing. and some of these are a little shoft because there is a stockpile of vaccines and they're trying to make sure all of that stuff gets used up. so that's really complicated. that's why things are a little bit vague. but as the