The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. wants to hire eight additional doctors, based on its latest budget submission to the Legislature.<\/p>\n
Corporation chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta disclosed to Saipan Tribune that there are currently 27 doctors working at the Commonwealth Health Center. Of these number, three are locums, or short-term hires, Babauta said. In addition, the hospital also has four physician assistants.<\/p>\n
For fiscal year 2012, the corporation proposes an operating budget of $38.5 million, of which $6 million will be used to pay for the salaries of doctors and physician assistants. <\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune learned that the corporation wants to hire replacements for physicians who left their posts last year, including Drs. Shirish Balachandra, Edward Kolner, George Macris, and Timothy Taylor. <\/p>\n
The corporation is also asking for funding to fill four other vacant slots for doctors: two for pediatrics, one for the emergency room, and one general physician.<\/p>\n
Babauta said the $6 million proposed salaries for these doctors include the one-year housing allowance, which varies from $7,200 to $9,500 per physician.<\/p>\n
[B]$250K maximum salary[\/B]<\/p>\n
Babauta described the current salary the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. offers to doctors as \u201cwithin range,\u201d noting a maximum of $250,000 per annum for a nephrologist. The amount is indicated in the corporation\u2019s 2012 budget proposal that was recently presented to the Legislature.<\/p>\n
Babauta pointed out that without a nephrologist, CHC could lose millions of federal reimbursements from both Medicare, which require at least one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that no one is indispensable, but a nephrologist is\u2026in this case because if we don\u2019t have one, our dialysis center will be ordered shut down. Medicare requires that there should be nephrologist at all times in the facility,\u201d he told Saipan Tribune, adding that he is also worried that without the additional nephrologist, this may overwork and burn out the only one they have right now.<\/p>\n
CHC has been operating without a radiologist for many years and Babauta said that salary and the volume of work have been big challenges to get one onboard. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why we don\u2019t have a radiologist is because this position requires $300,000 salary\u2014as the lowest. The other challenge is the volume of work for the radiologist here is not enough\u2026\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
CHC pays $70,000 per annum as the lowest salary at the physician level and this is for physician assistant positions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. wants to hire eight additional doctors, based on its latest budget submission to the Legislature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}