Esther Mu\u00f1a, the former acting deputy secretary for hospital administration, has stepped down as the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.\u2019s chief financial officer effective this month.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a confirmed her resignation yesterday, saying that she opted not to renew her contract, which expires on Jan. 10, 2012, as she wants to focus on her medical coding career.<\/p>\n
This year marks Mu\u00f1a\u2019s 20th at the hospital. She has a master\u2019s degree in health administration and is a certified professional coder. She started working for the Commonwealth Health Center as a medical transcriptionist. She also had a stint in administrative work before being moved to patient accounting in 1993 where she helped implement the first collections procedures for the hospital. She was promoted to business office manager in 2001.<\/p>\n
[B]Rift?[\/B]<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a\u2019s resignation received mixed reactions from many hospital staffers, who believe that her departure is due to a \u201crift\u201d with healthcare corporation CEO Juan N. Babauta.<\/p>\n
Saipan Tribune learned that since the corporation\u2019s takeover, some official functions of the CFO have been taken away from Mu\u00f1a and given to other staffers. Many employees believe this may have been the reason behind Mu\u00f1a\u2019s decision to resign. <\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a declined to comment on this when contacted yesterday.<\/p>\n
Babauta was in a meeting when contacted thrice yesterday and had yet to return calls as of press time. Saipan Tribune learned that Babauta named Cora Ada as acting hospital CFO.<\/p>\n
[B]Hard worder[\/B]<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a, according to hospital staffers, is one of the hardest workers at CHC. When the hospital lost its medical records manager in 2002, she stepped up to the plate to manage the unit in addition to maintaining her business office manager position. <\/p>\n
Again, in 2009, when Pete Untalan resigned from CHC as hospital administrator, she assumed the job of administrator while maintaining her CFO position\u2014all without additional pay. <\/p>\n
As hospital administrator, she worked with the Public Health secretary to address issues cited by a Medicare survey, including, resolving all issues needed to open the dialysis center in October 2011. Mu\u00f1a is also credited for the successful award of four different grants to the hospital last year.<\/p>\n
Since the takeover of the corporation in October, Mu\u00f1a was among the seven members of the corporation management team that directly worked with Babauta. <\/p>\n
As the hospital\u2019s chief financial officer, she was paid $49,500 per annum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Esther Mu\u00f1a, the former acting deputy secretary for hospital administration, has stepped down as the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.\u2019s chief financial officer effective this month.<\/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-157828","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\/157828","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=157828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}