Opinion | Health care dispute demonstrates a bigger problem at the U

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The University of Minnesota Physicians, Fairview Health Services and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison have reached a 10-year agreement that will prevent the medical school and hospital from shutting down next year. The University of Minnesota Board of Regents responded by calling the move a “hostile takeover.”

For years, the university has been unable to secure long-term funding to operate its medical school and hospital — state assets that the university and the Minnesota Legislature have a responsibility to fund and manage. The fact that doctors and Fairview had to ask the attorney general to intervene is a clear warning to the governor, legislators and regents: They have drifted too far off course and must steer back from the rocks.

Frank Cerra, M.D., former senior vice president for health sciences at the university, highlighted Fairview’s practical strengths in a recent Star Tribune commentary (“Deal between Fairview, U doctors is hopeful progress,” Nov. 14). He praised Fairview’s ability to focus “on the practical politics of the possible” rather than “political navigation” that would harm the future of health care in Minnesota. Cerra, a highly respected voice at the Legislature, is writing boldly between the lines: the Legislature and regents have become too politicized to oversee the practical realities of patient care.

In 2023, Sanford Health — a Sioux Falls-based hospital system with more than 130 years of service to the Dakotas and Minnesota — proposed partnering with the university to build a $1 billion hospital for its medical students and residents. The deal collapsed over fears that Sanford would not comply with Minnesota’s new laws on repeal of restrictions on abortion and protections for interstate pediatric gender therapy and surgery.

Whether you believe Sanford was the right partner (Cerra opposed it, arguing we should solve this without a South Dakota hospital’s help) the decision should not have been derailed by political activists who essentially vetoed a hospital based on opposition to that state’s governor.

Over their 28-year partnership, the university and Fairview have trained tens of thousands of medical students, residents and fellows. They are now spread around the state, the country and the world. Running a medical school and teaching hospital that attracts the best demands excellence.

Conversely, bad things happen when politics trumps common sense. In May 2020, Joan Gabel, then president of the University of Minnesota, sent a letter to the Minneapolis Police Department severing a relationship that had provided extra protection to students on campus. The attacks on students that followed this decision harmed safety, recruiting and fundraising. But more than that, they cemented a perception that the U couldn’t protect its kids because it lacked common sense. Minnesota’s land-grant university cannot afford to trade common sense for partisan activism.