Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. board chair Jack Torres said yesterday that all final decisions relating to the operation of the Commonwealth Health Center and the Rota and Tinian health centers are made by chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta, whom he described as the person who \u201ccalls all the shots at the corporation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres pointed out that despite the existence of the healthcare corporation board, the CEO has the full authority to decide on any matter because the board only serves as an advisory panel for the CEO. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re functioning only as an adviser to the CEO, so whatever recommendations or actions we take [at the board level], the final say still lies with the CEO,\u201d Torres told Saipan Tribune, adding that whoever sits as corporation CEO can either take or reject what the board approves or recommends.<\/p>\n
For example, even if the board votes to suspend or cut the housing benefits of the hospital\u2019s off-island hires, the CEO still has the final word on the issue. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven if we decided [at the board level] to cut or suspend this benefit, if the CEO feels that it needs to be kept and has the funds to do it, it\u2019s his call,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Compared to other governing boards of other agencies, the corporation board is also not required to regularly meet but can call for any special meeting of members, Torres said. <\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one power that lies within the corporation board\u2019s power, it is in evaluating the performance of the CEO every year.<\/p>\n
Torres said that the board has full confidence in Babauta\u2019s ability to turn around the financial state of the public hospital. <\/p>\n
Babauta is technically just a \u201cvolunteer\u201d at the corporation after he chose to keep his \u201cretiree\u201d status and continue receiving his pension instead of an $80,000 annual salary.<\/p>\n
Torres also lauded Babauta\u2019s decision to implement the board-recommended emergency workforce reduction to reduce the organization\u2019s personnel cost. The corporation needs $800,000 every two weeks to meet its payroll.<\/p>\n
The corporation board has seven voting members: Torres, Pedro Dela Cruz, Roy Rios, Anthony Aguon, Dr. Jeremy Richards, Anthony Raho, and Babauta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. board chair Jack Torres said yesterday that all final decisions relating to the operation of the Commonwealth Health Center and the Rota and Tinian health centers are made by chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta, whom he described as the person who \u201ccalls all the shots at the corporation.\u201d<\/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-159984","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\/159984","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=159984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}