How many DEI apparatchiks does it take to create a zone of perfect social justice? At UW Medicine, a health system comprising the University of Washington School of Medicine and other medical centers and facilities, the answer is apparently a startling 38.
A glance at the system’s Office of Healthcare Equity (OHCE) website provides few clues about what these highly trained men and women do all day.
Among the office’s boilerplate pronouncements are that “everyone should have the same access and opportunities for the best possible [healthcare] outcomes” and that physicians should work to “eliminate inequities.” Standard stuff.
The office’s work product comprises in large part such typical business as “spotlight series,” newsletters, and “resource fair” participation.
Nor does scanning employees’ titles clear things up.
OHCE lists five workers at the “assistant” level (e.g., assistant dean for equity, diversity & inclusion in research) and a whopping 13 at the level of “director.” Yet what work, for example, does an executive director of workforce inclusion and healthcare system equity actually perform? The answer is left entirely to the imagination.
Ideological preening is certainly on that list of tasks. Between them, OHCE’s 38 employees list 77 pronouns, among them not only “she” and “he” but “they” and “ella.” (Using one’s pronoun list to signal Spanish-language proficiency is a curious development.)
Unique references to “equity” (8), “inclusion” (5), and “diversity” (4) abound in employees’ titles, as does newfangled aspirational lingo (e.g., “transformational research”). Faced with the latter, OHCE’s four project managers must feel as if their titles are positively dull.
Why is this happening?
As the U.S. Department of Education has made clear, educational institutions accepting federal funds may not engage in racial discrimination in their “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, sanctions, discipline, and beyond” (emphases added).
Nor, at least arguably, may hospital systems that act as de facto federal contractors by accepting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.
DEI offices, no matter what they currently call themselves, often contravene this prohibition through practices that cast serious doubt on their adherence to established civil‑rights obligations.
Yet, in the case of UW Medicine’s OHCE, the problem also strikes a fiscal note.
According to publicly available data, the office’s employees have cost the state more than $18 million in salary alone since 2021. Though some OHCE employees may have roles in (and receive some of their pay from) other areas of the system, this figure nevertheless represents a massive expenditure.
If UW Medicine wants to tighten its belt or redirect its funds to actual medical education and treatment, it should markedly trim its OHCE numbers.
If it wants to comply with federal guidance and the spirit of federal civil-rights law, it should shutter the office altogether.
