Skip to main content
On Aug. 7, Oregon Health & Science University made an abrupt internal announcement: Its chief lawyer, Alice Cuprill Comas, would be retiring that very day. She had been on family leave for weeks, OHSU said, and felt the need to turn her full attention to the health of an ailing parent.
But there was an additional dynamic at play between OHSU and Cuprill Comas that the medical center did not publicize or answer questions about at the time: an exit agreement in which OHSU agreed to say nice things about her—and pay her $1.8 million in severance pay.
The document, dated Aug. 7 and titled “Resignation Agreement and Mutual General Release,” turns out to have been significant. In the agreement, obtained Thursday by WW through a public records request, OHSU agreed to pay Cuprill Comas $1,791,990.36—the equivalent of 24 months’ base pay—plus an additional $20,250, while she agreed not to file legal claims against the institution.
OHSU also said it would pay Cuprill Comas $15,000 for attorneys’ fees related to the negotiation of the agreement. And it agreed to restrict its messaging about Cuprill Comas to basic employment details and a positive characterization of her tenure, which it would also provide to any prospective employers seeking a reference in the future.
Cuprill Comas, for her part, said in the contract that she would release and waive “any and all claims that she might possibly have” against OHSU, “whether she is aware of them or not, which arose prior to the execution of this agreement.”
Under the agreement, OHSU would pay her the $1.8 million in two installments. It would pay her the first half in a wire transfer no later than 10 days after the Aug. 7 agreement was executed. It would pay the other half on Jan. 5, 2027.
Cuprill Comas acknowledged that she would not have been entitled to these financial benefits if not for their inclusion in the exit agreement.
She’d spent a long time at OHSU. She joined the institution’s legal office in 2012 and became its general counsel in 2017.
It’s a key leadership position at the major public medical center, which is also Portland’s largest employer. She was responsible for the legal advice given to the institution’s governance board, president, and other executives—and OHSU’s broader legal strategy, which has come under some scrutiny for its tactics in court. Cuprill Comas got a new boss in August 2025, when Dr. Shereef Elnahal took over as OHSU president.
Of course, in a litigious world, these packages often provide some value to the employer; they define the terms of the exit and insulate the institution from potential legal claims.
WW has no evidence any such legal claim was brewing in this case. Cuprill Comas could not be reached for comment. OHSU did not answer a question about how this exit agreement compares with those normally given to retiring employees, or whether it would be accurate to describe the exit agreement as a severance agreement.
“In light of OHSU’s policies and practices regarding employee confidentiality and personnel matters, OHSU cannot comment,” it said in a statement.
Indeed, the contract would appear to severely limit what OHSU can publicly say. The nine-page document included agreed-upon language that OHSU would “exclusively” use in communications about Cuprill Comas’ separation from employment—whether OHSU was speaking with the press, faculty, students, donors or trustees.
The form statement it would use when characterizing the separation is Exhibit A in the agreement, and a version of it was indeed used in OHSU’s Aug. 7 internal announcement of Cuprill Comas’s retirement. It included positive sentiments from OHSU leaders like Elnahal and OHSU board chair Susan King.
The agreement also defined the language Elnahal could use when prospective employers contacted him for a professional reference on Cuprill Comas. It said he would confirm her dates of employment and jobs, and that she’d decided to leave for family reasons. And it defined the way he would depict her tenure.
“Alice came to OHSU having developed deep strategic expertise in corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions and health care administration and she demonstrated those skills throughout her tenure,” Elnahal would say in reference checks, under the agreement. “Her forethought and deep understanding of OHSU, its mission, employees, students and patients, proved invaluable in confronting many challenges, including those resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its long-lasting impacts on the institution. Alice is an extremely intelligent, ethical and hard-working executive who cares passionately about ensuring the success of the enterprise.”
OHSU did not release details from this exit agreement promptly. On Aug. 7, the day Cuprill Comas’ retirement was announced, WW asked the OHSU media team if she was receiving compensation as part of the exit agreement. OHSU spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley did not answer the question, responding instead that the newspaper should give Cuprill Comas privacy.
“Alice is a long-time, beloved OHSU leader who had to leave urgently to take care of a family member,” Hargens-Bradley wrote. “We ask that you give her privacy at this time.”
WW followed up three times in the next few weeks to repeat the question about the exit agreement.
The spokesperson did not respond until Aug. 31. “Thanks for your patience while I waited to hear back from folks,” she said, adding that the paper would need to file a public records request.
Exit agreements have become commonplace for executives at public institutions, but the scale of Cuprill Comas’ exit package stands out.
The board of Home Forward, Portland’s troubled housing authority, agreed to pay CEO Ivory Matthews $171,000 in severance when she resigned early this year after WW reporting on her travel at taxpayer expense.
A few days later, the city of Portland said it would give public safety leader Bob Cozzie a severance of $275,000. Metro, in 2022, gave former director of communications Neil Simon $141,000—the equivalent of eight months’ salary and benefits.
OHSU’s publicly documented exit packages have also historically been more modest. In 2024, for example, OHSU gave its former chief people officer, Qiana Williams, a one-time payment of $75,000 and said she could continue to collect her $550,000 salary for at least a year unless she found a new job.
