Burton to get $8M funding for dialysis

Visiting Indiana Rep. Daniel Burton has identified some $8 million budget for insular areas, including some $1.5 million to $2 million for the CNMI, to purchase dialysis machines.

“I’ve been working with them [federal and local officials] to get some funding for dialysis machines because you have diabetes epidemic here. We’re trying to get $8 million for the region,” he said in an interview.

Burton, who arrived Sunday on Saipan and left yesterday, toured the hemodialysis construction site Monday.

“I went to the hospital with the governor to see the expansion. They told me about the need for more dialysis machines. They said they’re going to have 20 plus dialysis machines but they need more than that. So we’re trying to get funding for that,” said Burton.

Burton, chair of the Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights, said he was “bothered” and felt “very upset” the first time he saw the poor health care facilities in the CNMI, a U.S. jurisdiction.

“The first time I came here on Saipan and Guam, I became very upset because I saw that many American citizens were not getting the proper amount of health care and that bothered me. I saw the diabetes epidemic and the need over here. The Medicaid formula is not the way it should be. There’s a whole lot of things to be changed,” he said.

Burton first visited the CNMI in December 2003.

In February 2004, he called a congressional hearing and invited Gov. Juan N. Babauta and Department of Public Health Secretary James U. Hofschneider to testify about the health care situation in the Commonwealth.

A few weeks ago, he spoke before his colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives pushing to raise the funding ceiling on all Medicaid funding to the CNMI and other U.S. territories.

Federal statutory matching rates for Medicaid in U.S. territories is 77-23 percent. The CNMI said it spends up to $11 million for Medicaid patients now totaling about 8,000.

Burton’s funding support came on the heels of the CNMI asking the U.S. Congress to provide at least $1.1 million to equip CHC’ expanded dialysis facility.

In his testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform and Subcommittee on Wellness and Human Rights in February this year, Hofschneider said that the CNMI government budget could barely cover for the construction of the new building.

He said the local funding only included construction of the new building, not taking into consideration the cost of furnishing the building, or equipping it with necessary medical equipment.

He said that the purchase of equipment for the facility would require at least $1.2 million, including the acquisition of 42 hemodialysis stations at $25,000 and five automated peritoneal dialysis units at $14,000 each.

He said the department would also need technical assistance to conduct research projects aimed at children, focusing on prevention.

Further, the department needs funding for seminars and training for diabetes patients and their families, screening of people at risk of diabetes, funding for physicians who are specialists in diabetes complications, and funding to improve local staff capability.

The secretary said that bringing in specialists to the CNMI would decrease the government’s outstanding debt due to off-island medical referral.