Action item. Item 1, action item, Public Employee appointment hiring, h. S. S. Executive director position, vote on whether to hold closed session for update regarding board selection of h. S. S. Executive director, president scott. President scott will to entertain a motion to go into closed session for action as described. Properly moved and seconded. Any comment from the board, Public Comment, hearing and seeing none, now ready to vote. All those signify by aye, president scott we are now reconvened in open session. I am willing to entertain item 3 on the special agenda. Clerk action item, vote to elect whether to disclose any or all discussion held in closed session. President scott. President scott will to entertain a motion as to whether we disclose any or all of our discussion in closed session. Not the nomination, just the discussion. President scott discussion. Willing to entertain a motion. I move we not disclose discussion in closed session. President scott properly moved we not disclose any or all of the discussion held in closed session. A second . Second. President scott properly moved and seconded, any Public Comment, hearing and seeing none, all those in favor of the item not to disclose any or all of our closed discussion, say aye, opposed, so ordered. Item 4. Possible report on action taken in closed session. President scott willing to a motion to report on the action taken in closed session during the president s report. Is there i move the report i move the report action taken in closed session. Be disclosed. During the president s report . During the president s report. Ok. Is there a second . Second. Properly moved and seconded that we make a report on action taken in closed session during the president s report. Is there discussion . Hearing and seeing none, is there any Public Comment . Hearing and seeing no Public Comment, we are now ready to vote. All those in favor of disclosing during the president s report action taken during the closed session, signify by saying aye. Those opposed, the motion carries unanimously. We will now adjourn this portion of the meeting and take a recess while we go into our regular meeting. Ok. President scott good afternoon, i call to order this meeting of the Health Service board for the city and county of San Francisco. I would like to ask you to please stand and join with 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 god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Ill ask our secretary to call roll. [roll call taken] we have a quorum. President scott thank you. Again, happy new year. And we look forward to undertaking the work of the board and the services that we are trying to provide to our members for the coming year, and with that, we will go to action item one. Approval with possible modifications of the minutes of the meetings set forth below, special closed session of december 14, 2017, special meeting of december 14, 2017. President scott are there any edits or additions or amends to the minutes as described . If not, im willing to entertain a motion for their approval. I move we approve. Moved, is there a second . Second. President scott properly moved and seconded we approve the minutes for the closed session december 14, 2017, and the special meeting of december 14, 2017. Any comments from the board . Is there any Public Comment . We do have Public Comment . Dennis krueger, retired firefighters and spouses. I want to make a statement that last month at the december meeting i made some inaccurate statements and i would like to apologize to the board for that. But that, i will be coming back again regarding hearing aids and cataract surgery during open rates and benefits. Thank you. President scott rates and benefits. Thank you very much for amending your statements regarding those comments that you made in the last meeting. And i would just make a footnote that this last Public Comment was also made to me right after the meeting, so thank you again, dennis. Appreciate it. Any other Public Comment . Hearing and seeing none, now ready to vote. All those in vote signify by saying aye. Opposed, carries unanimously. Well now go to item 2. Discussion item, general Public Comment on matters in the boards jurisdiction, not appearing on todays agenda. President scott is there any Public Comment on matters within our jurisdiction that do not appear on todays agenda . If there are such matters, i would ask those individuals to please approach the podium and when you do make your statement, please introduce yourself by giving us your name. Hello, commissioners, my name is gail bloom, im a retired member. I ask your secretary to pass forward a couple of items. They are kind of personal as you can see. The first one is an unpaid bill to suter hill by united for my daughter who is a dependent, and this apparently is a problem that extends beyond my daughters coverage. United is not paying bills to the extent possible because they are not recognizing suter as a preferred provider. And so they are treating them as out of network care and if youll notice, im getting past due bills and they are about to go to collection. And so i would like someone from united to go back and figure out why it is that they dont recognize suters health i. D. Numbers, and ive been told they have already resubmitted it a couple times and ive been told by suter that it is a problem insurance wise with united. So im just bringing that to your attention. President scott before you go, did you bring this issue to the h. H. S. Staff through Customer Service . I did, and they said that i could either write to them or bring it to your attention directly. President scott im going to ask acting executive director griggs to discuss this with you when we are in recess or before you leave so we can get to the bottom of it. Thank you. Im sure its just an administrative issue and certainly know its not personal. President scott thank you. One other item. This is also something that i find curious. And it came up because one of my prescriptions wasnt offered to me as part of my insurance. My prescription coverage. And so i was recommended by my doctor to look at something called good rx. Now, my prescription, which you can see in front of you, is a tier 3 drug for a variety of reasons it was not available. It should have been 45 for three months. But just using this website, which is like available to anybody in the world, you can see that the prices range from 11. 22 to 36. And it seems to me curious that an Insurance Coverage that we are paying a lot for doesnt compete very well against some random website and so ive been using this for some time, but i thought i would bring that to your attention. President scott thank you. Director griggs, do you have any comment on this second item . On the second item, i will take that back to the office and do some research, operations manager. And i understand that a lot of medical professionals have been doing research on their own coverage, and they are shocked that their own insurance isnt as effective with pharmaceuticals as organizations like good rx. And i advise everybody to look at their look at their pharmaceuticals. Because it is really significant, particularly for people who are in donut holes. President scott thank you for those comments. Any questions for the board on the comments, none. All right. Please introduce yourself. Good afternoon, my name is richard bronman, retired city worker and kaiser member for i cant remember how many years. But last couple of weeks ive had some really bad experiences at kaiser. I think maybe when we renew the contracts that we ask for feedback and somehow kaiser has to be responsible. I had the occasion to be in the emergency room saturday night. They were very overcrowded. I dont know why they didnt have more staff there. But i ran into one of the meanest nurses ive ever had the encounter to. She was just really nasty. She didnt even have a name tag on, so i couldnt report her. But the other is the pharmacy. I get all my pharmacy by mail and i went to renew it and it said one, i had to go into the pharmacy, and i was very curious because its a generic medicine and why. So, i called up, i must have spent almost an hour on the telephone because the operator did not know, she had to talk to the pharmacy, did not keep the pharmacist online, then she had to connect me again, i had to wait another time. This all could have been handled by email if the pharmacy would have emailed me or emailed my doctor that the dosage is changing but ill get the same amount. Instead of me waiting, you know, spending an hour on the phone. Even if i went to the pharmacy i couldnt have picked up the medicine because the doctor would have had to approve it. So, i think, you know, when rates and benefits come up, that somehow kaiser needs to be held accountable. Maybe if we withhold the payment for a couple of months, you know, theyll get the message. And let the other nursing staff, you know, has been really great there, the doctors are really great, i cant, you know, complain about the other service. But you know, i think we should expect the best service and i know we are all not perfect, but at least we can strive to make things better when we find things that are not that need improvement. So, i wanted to bring it to your attention and to hopefully the kaiser rep in the audience today. Thank you very much. President scott thank for your comment. Any other Public Comment on matters that do not appear on todays agenda . Hearing and seeing none, now go to discussion item 3. Item 3, president s report, president scott. President scott my discussion item will be a report that the board just voted on at the end of the last closed session to disclose the action that we had taken during the course of that closed meeting, and the prior efforts by this board to find a new executive director. Before i begin that, i want to give some thank you, and i would like to have pamela levin, our chief Financial Officer to come to the podium while i address her for a moment. Pamela, i know that i speak on behalf of the board without consulting with them, but im going to say some things to you that i think are in the spirit of commendation for the hard work and efforts that you provided during the course of this transition. It isnt publicly maybe known that this past year the city and county of San Francisco went through a whole massive change in the financial and budgeting system. New chart of accounts, all kinds of stuff that was supposed to be maybe done a year or two back or a year or two hence, but all came crashing down on your shoulders this past summer, and you gave great leadership to not only the work and the effect, the implementation of that system and this department, but also provided good guidance to collaboration with other departments within the city and county of San Francisco, while maintaining your month in and month out reporting to this board on the assets of the trust and its activities, along with all the other contracting activities and so forth. And i wanted to say publicly to you today, thank you for continuing to show the type of professionalism and dedication to the system in your role as chief Financial Officer during this time of transition. So, thank you very much. Thank you. I could not have it without having such a great staff. Thank you very much. Thank you to you and your team. [applause] president Scott Mitchell does not have to stand, hes up here with us, but our chief operating officer and acting executive director, mitchell griggs. I know that sometimes during a period of transition, mitchell, its very easy to kind of lean back and sort of let things be as they are. And again, i know that on behalf of the board, that that did not happen during this transition period. You not only maintained all the operational stuff you had to do, we also made some new benefit offerings under your leadership and guidance. We experimented with open enrollment electronically, which we hope we can expand. We completed some of the aspect of our claims Management System to utilize in a slightly different way and a number of other innovations that were directly attributable to your leadership and your staffs work during this time. And so on behalf of the board, i want to commend you publicly. I have said this to you privately many times, for your hard work and effort and my hope is we can in a more tangible way provide some recognition for you as we go forward. So, thank you again for all youve done during this period. Mitchell. [applause] now, also maybe not as impacted by the transition, but lani scott has kept it operational day in and day out, and you have our commendation and recognition for all your hard work during this period of time. I know that sometimes i may not have been as clear in my requests of you but youve always been very patient and i appreciate that, and thank you for all that you do on behalf of the system. You are welcome, thank you. And to the broader h. H. S. Staff, if you are listening, or you might be seeing a replay of this, your teamwork and professionalism absolutely has caused us to be in a very good place. We recognize that it has been somewhat disconcerting not having an executive leader, but at the same time, by working as you have very collaboratively with mitchell and with pamela and the other Management Team members, we have been able to serve our members well during this past year without gaps in operations or Customer Service and you are absolutely to be commended on the hard work you have done throughout open enrollment and day in and day out, and working with our members. And on behalf of the board, we thank you for doing what you have done and what we know you will continue to do on behalf of our members, and thats to the whole staff. So, thank you. So, this search process began as you know last, late april or early, really, effectively, early may. And we have been working at trying to find a replacement for the immediate past executive director. We retained a search firm to work with us. Assigned executive was heather renchler. She is not able to be here today due to a family members personal circumstance and is back in ohio. But i told her that if she were here, i was going to say thank you on behalf of the board for the professionalism, thoroughness and diligence that she and her firm brought to the search. I dont think we would have been able to get through this process as easily as we did, even though it might have been frustrating at certain moments. But as easily as we did without her Firm Leadership and guidance and that of her firm. So, i wanted to thank her publicly for what she did to assist us in coming to this point. We have had we had a stage of input and consultation with active employees, with retirees, retiree organizations, members of the commission, individually, visiting with heather regarding what would be the appropriate profile for the next executive director for the Health Service system. What needed to be emphasized, what needed to be highlighted, what would be some essential criteria, preferred criteria, and so forth. The commissioners on this board worked and participated actively in every stage of the process during this search. We had to have special meetings, closed meetings in some cases. They were full in their attendance and participation in doing this work. We did go through an interview process, there were 53 applications, we narrowed it down. Personal interviews, screening interviews, first stage interviews with the finalists and then final interviews, and these commissioners participated actively in all of those meetings. I want to thank them for discretion, hard work, the fact we did at times may have a little disagreement on process or procedure but we got through it, and i appreciated their cooperation and support. So, we have found not only the person, we have made an offer, the offer has been accepted and my task and duty, warm duty, to present that person to you today. The name is abby ant. Abby, would you please come forward . She knows some people. Thats a good thing. Yes. Claire is wondering why i was here. Abby is going to be joining the system on february 12th, officially as the executive director. She currently is serving at the st. Francis hospital in a role of Vice President of mission and Advocacy CommunityHealth Services. She is a 17 shes been with them nearly 18 years. Prior to that she had a role and responsibility with the city and county of San Francisco in the health department. And spent some nearly ten years there. Abby is a seasoned, experienced health professional. Shes published, i was overwhelmed by the variety of articles that both she has authored and interviews that shes participated in on a wide range of health care and Health Service issues that i think represent the kind of strategic view and knowledge of this field that the system needs going forward. Shes also been an active member on a wide ranging number of boards, cofounding some communitybased initiatives to help deliver services to the homeless and the needy in our city. And she has done a number of other activities on a voluntary basis and one of her questions has been privately and trying to sort out how she will continue to do some of that work, with not incurring a city of San Francisco conflict of interest. I said to her privately, i appreciated her patience with our process, but i think its more than its a consensus of this board we have found the right person for this next stage of leadership and service to our members in the Health Services system. So abby, we welcome you, we look forward to working with you, and i would ask if you have any comments that you would like to provide, and i understand you have members of your family here today as well. Yes, thank you, th