Audio by Giselle Espinoza
Campus Health & Wellbeing is offering expanded hours at the Health Center starting today. Students will now have access to in-person appointments with a physician Tuesdays until 7:00 p.m. and on Sundays via phone from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But campus health care providers say this may not be the best for students.
“The idea of expanding hours is not necessarily a bad idea,” said Spencer Davison, a representative for the Union of American Physicians and Dentists. “As a union, we want to make sure that patients have access to care. But having access to care and having access to adequate care are two very different things.”
The Union of American Physicians and Dentists represents the physicians and psychiatrists who work in the Health Center. Other health care providers are represented by the California State University Employees Union.
During the extended Tuesday evening hours and Sunday telehealth offerings, there will not be pharmacy, x-ray or lab services available.
“Students will have some limited expanded access to a provider,” Davison said. “But the provider is going to be very limited in what they can do.”
If it becomes apparent during an appointment that a student may need x-ray, lab or pharmacy services, there are a few options for care. If the situation is urgent, the patient will be directed to a local emergency room or have their prescription filled by a local retail pharmacy, according to university spokesperson Keegan Koberl.
“Because expanded hours are by appointment only, students will be seen for lower acuity or non-urgent concerns during expanded hours,” Koberl said.
The call for more health care providers
With these hours changes, there will be less appointments Tuesday mornings and one less physician available for appointments on Fridays, since that person will be working the extended hours shifts. Davison said the union is worried the expanded hours will actually lower a student’s ability to access care.
“Now you have less providers during the core hours,” Davison said. “There is no plan right now for them to modify the amount of patients that come in during the day. And we do not expect that the patient load is going to go down at all.”
The union believes Cal Poly must hire more staff if they intend to offer expanded hours without affecting day-to-day operations, Davison said.
“When I say hire people, it’s providers, it’s lab techs, it’s pharmacists, it’s x-ray techs,” Davison said. “If they really want to provide adequate expanded hours, that’s what would have to happen. I don’t see why it can’t be done because Cal Poly students are charged one of the highest student health services rates in the state.”
“These are professional physicians that want to be able to focus on their job and provide high quality healthcare to students,” Davison said. “That’s why they took this job. They care about what they do.”
Spencer Davison, a representative for the Union of American Physicians and Dentists
Campus Health and Wellbeing is currently working to fill three open medical provider positions within Health Services, according to Koberl. The applications for the three positions opened earlier this month, according to the Cal Poly jobs portal.
“We will continue to evaluate our staffing needs based on utilization data and enrollment growth,” Koberl said.
Beyond Health Services, the Counseling & Psychological Services team also offers after-hours appointments virtually, and the Cal Poly Food Pantry regularly expands access hours during the academic year, according to Koberl.
The university raised the Health Services fee in 2018, students now pay $773 a year
During fall quarter in 2017, the ASI Board of Directors approved the university’s proposal to increase the health services fee. In Jan. 2018, President Jeffrey Armstrong approved the nearly $300 a year increase per student to the health services fee.
The proposal to increase health fees listed many potential benefits, including a commitment to expanding hours into evenings, according to Campus Health & Wellbeing’s page on the fee proposal.
The fee increase was implemented over the course of four years starting in the fall of 2018 and includes an annual 4% increase to keep up with inflation and rising health care costs. Currently, Cal Poly students pay $773 for the health fee, according to Cal State data.
Students have been advocating for expanding health services hours for years. The university proposed the health fee increase nearly ten years ago in response to problems identified in customer service surveys, including limited hours. The ASI Board of Directors passed a resolution calling for expanding hours to evenings and weekends last year.
“It’s in this resolution that we need expanded hours because a lot of our students are in class from eight to five Monday through Friday or a lot of those hours,” Davison said. “If they need care outside of those hours, they’re having to go to urgent care. If they don’t have insurance or good insurance, they’re paying extra out of pocket.”
This set of expanded hours are the university’s first time increasing hours since the fee increase. Campus Health & Wellbeing previously offered expanded hours prior to 2017, but lack of utilization, support staff and limited communication affected our ability to fully deliver, according to Koberl.
The ASI representatives talked to students about the increase and the university surveyed for student feedback via forums, but there was no full student body referendum conducted. A state auditor said Cal Poly fees should be decided by student vote in 2020.
Some representatives who opposed the fee increase said they did not have enough time to gather student input, according to previous Mustang News coverage.
The physician’s union is challenging the impacts of the change
Tina Hadaway-Mellis, assistant vice president for student affairs health and wellbeing, announced the changes to the hours in May, 2025, according to emails obtained by Mustang News. The Union of American Physicians and Dentists, which represents medical providers at the Health Center, claims the Union was not informed of these changes.
“Anytime there is a policy change, a change in working conditions that would impact the members of our union, the campus is actually required to provide notice to the union and provide us a right to meet and confer over those impacts and to bargain over them,” Davison said. “When this all came out, they did not do that.”
As of now, none of the health care providers who are represented by the Union of American Physicians and Dentists are having their hours changed. The union still believes the staff he represents are affected by these changes.
“We do challenge that we are not impacted,” Davison said. “Even if our physicians are not required to do the expanded hours, the fact that you are pulling providers who are normally there from eight to five Monday through Friday is still an impact. You’re pulling them off of those shifts and transitioning them to shifts outside of that work schedule.”
Another possible solution to expanding hours
In last year’s ASI resolution that called for expanding the Health Center’s services, the Board of Directors said it believed expanding Health Center hours could likely be achieved through reallocating existing funding.
The Board of Directors also suggest the option of extending hours by partnering with a local health provider.
“The University of Colorado, Boulder, has implemented a partnership with a local health center to provide discounted medical services to students on weekends,” the resolution states. “[This] presents an alternative model for expanding access to care while keeping costs reasonable and meeting student needs.”
