As many as 1 million Medi-Cal patients could lose their health coverage due to recent state and Los Angeles County budget constraints.
More than 300 students, physicians and healthcare executives convened to discuss the challenge of innovating health technology amid financial restraints. It marked the event’s largest turnout since its inception, according to Healthcare Business Association at the UCLA Anderson School of Management president, Erica Jaffe.
HBA – a club providing professional development and education to students interested in the business of healthcare – hosted the event in collaboration with the new UCLA Anderson Center for Healthcare Innovation.
Jaffe said the theme explores what it takes to lead, build and deliver healthcare amid rising costs and accelerating innovation, given the rise of wearable health-monitoring technologies that provide more patient data than ever before.
HBA organized the panel discussions to open with a high-level discussion surrounding the regulatory and funding landscape of the healthcare industry, followed by a panel tracing the flow of finances through the system, Jaffe said. These discussions led to more dialogue about accelerating innovations safely and methodically and how health systems can leverage the wealth of data patients collect using wearable medical devices, she added.
In the opening fireside chat, executives from some of the largest Medi-Cal, Medicare and Medicare Advantage providers serving LA County – such as L.A. Care Health Plan, UCLA Health and Alignment Health – spoke about the challenges funding and regulatory constraints place on care delivery.
Martha Santana-Chin, the chief executive officer of L.A. Care Health Plan – which serves 2.5 million primarily low-income and Medi-Cal members in the County – said L.A. Care will no longer be able to serve 650,000 members in the next three years due to state and county budget constraints.
“When budget cuts of this nature come to pass, and when uncompensated care comes about as a result of the uninsured rising, it destabilizes the healthcare delivery system,” she said.
Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health and CEO of the UCLA Health System, said UCLA Health aims to prioritize patient care amid ongoing resource constraints.
“We try to keep the patient at the center of everything we do,” Spisso said. “When we step back and think about our role as a healthcare system, our business is patient care. That’s our product.”
Spisso added that UCLA Health faces the challenge of making $200 million in reductions every year due to shrinking reimbursements. She said UCLA Health makes reductions with team members, prioritizing resources for patient care by utilizing a performance improvement model that integrates voices from patients and families, as well as physicians and staff.
Outside the conference, about 15 union members from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 – which represents about 37,000 skilled craft, patient care and service workers across the UC – picketed and flyered to raise awareness. The union members alleged that UCLA Health workers are leaving their jobs due to chronic understaffing and rising costs without adequate pay that leave them unable to live near work.
The union alleged in an emailed statement that UC President James Milliken and other UC leaders are worsening California’s affordability crisis by not paying workers fair wages, vowing to continue holding them accountable.
AFSCME Local 3299, which has been in negotiations with the UC for a new contract since November 2025, struck four times during the 2024-2025 academic year. The union struck most recently in November.
“They (frontline service and patient care professionals) commute hours each way to work, sleep in their cars and some live in homeless shelters because ultra-wealthy UC Executives like Johnese Spisso refuse to help workers keep pace with rising costs, access affordable healthcare or housing near their jobs,” said Kari Salcedo, a strategic communications director for AFSCME Local 3299, in a written statement.
Wesley Yin, a professor of economics at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, said in a panel that the high costs of delivering high-quality services, especially to achieve value-based care initiatives, often exclude rural and lower-income areas due to the high capital needed.
Yin, who previously served in the Biden administration as the associate director for economic policy and chief economist in the Office of Management and Budget, said increasing vertical integration between hospitals and other stakeholders like pharmacy benefit managers, payers and data vendors is not only limiting competition but also adding to costs.
“We get some benefits out of it, but ultimately, we get more financial consolidation rather than clinical consolidation, and that’s creating a lot of problems for the ability to pay for these services,” Yin said.
The conversation then shifted to discuss how innovations in wearable health-monitoring technologies can be implemented safely and methodically.
Sean Brecker, chief financial officer of Oura Health, said the present economic infrastructure of healthcare focuses on treating sickness rather than prevention.
Brecker said his inspiration came from his personal health journey in preventative medicine and his family history of cardiovascular issues.
Through the lens of data, Brecker said there is a completely new dynamic of how he interacts with his primary care physicians given the data his Oura Ring provides him with.
“Prevention generally requires investment today for payoffs that are going to pay off decades into the future,” Brecker said.
Radoslaw Raychev, a physician and MBA student who attended the event, said attending conferences like VITALS has allowed him to look at healthcare from business, innovation and management standpoints.
Fabian Guo, a first-year computational biology student, said the conference was a great opportunity to network and hear unique perspectives. He said he encourages other undergraduate students to attend conferences like VITALS.
Serena Agrawal, the executive vice president of industry and engagement at HBA, ended the conference with a call to action.
“Access is not just a policy issue, innovation is not just a technology issue, empowerment isn’t just a patient issue,” Agarwal said. “These problems live at the intersection of finance and operations and clinical care and technology.”
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