Background
With the passage of Public Law 93-641, the Bay Area Comprehensive Health Planning Agency began activities to develop a Health
Systems Agency based on a nine county health service area. Area #4 was established for Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo
Counties. Several groups applied for designation as Area #4 agency, and a compromise was reached between the Boards of Supervisors
of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties and the Comprehensive Health Planning Councils in Marin and San Mateo counties,
and on June 16, 1976, the Agency was incorporated. The West Bay Health Systems Agency was fully designated by the Department
of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) as the Health Systems Agency for the three counties on January 19, 1979.
A first goal of developing a Health systems plan ("community / population based planning for the whole person") took the initial
activity of the Agency. This was followed by implementation of the plan which would encompass review, comment and approval
of "not only numbers of beds, but capital expenditures, federal funds for health coming into the area and the appropriateness
of existing services." Implementation was carried out through meetings of advisory groups (consumers and providers of health
care) and the gathering of information, both statistical and textual. All of these are represented in the West Bay records.
The decline in funding support led to the dissolution of the Agency in July 1983, at which time the administrative records
(with the exception of several series) came to UCSF Special Collections.
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