After two years as nursing director of the Commonwealth Health Center, Leticia Reyes has left the position for undisclosed reasons. Saipan Tribune learned this from hospital employees who asked not to be identified.<\/p>\n
It was learned that Reyes last reported for work on Dec. 24, 2013, days ahead of the expiration of her contract this month. She tendered her resignation with Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. interim CEO Esther Mu\u00f1a, who declined to comment on the issue when asked Friday.<\/p>\n
Reyes was hired at the hospital in January 2012 during the term of former CEO Juan N. Babauta. She was tasked to oversee the nursing department\u2019s over 200 staff, including ancilliary services personnel.<\/p>\n
When asked for comment, CHC hospital services director Jesse Tudela confirmed Reyes\u2019 exit but said he is unaware of the content of the resignation letter because it was directly submitted to the CEO\u2019s office. He maintained, however, that it is business as usual at the hospital.<\/p>\n
Named acting nursing director is Mildred Keller. <\/p>\n
According to Tudela, CHCC is now in the process of hiring Reyes\u2019 replacement. In fact, he drafted a memorandum indicating the critical need to fill the post as soon as possible. A job vacancy announcement for the position is upcoming, he said. <\/p>\n
As of Friday, the corporation has a total of 181 nurses, including at the clinics on Rota and Tinian, Tudela said. <\/p>\n
To fill the 225 FTEs for nurses it is authorized to hire this fiscal year, the corporation will need to employ 44 more nurses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the figure that we need [225 nurses], so essentially we need to hire 44 more nurses of which majority are needed at CHC,\u201d Tudela said.<\/p>\n
He is optimistic that once the corporation is able to hire more personnel from outside the CNMI, critical vacancies will be filled not only at the nursing department but all medical professionals needed on the island.<\/p>\n
Tudela said that getting experienced nurses is among their priorities. He reiterated that not too many nurses or related professionals can be found on the island.<\/p>\n
Despite the lack of manpower in some units of the hospital, Tudela said the corporation has been successful in addressing the deficiencies identified by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during a September 2012 survey. <\/p>\n
As of Friday, the federal health agency has yet to issue a decision on the survey. \u201cWe\u2019re still trying to meet all deficiencies and concerns and we\u2019re awaiting CMS response to our report so we can do the necessary corrections,\u201d added Tudela.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After two years as nursing director of the Commonwealth Health Center, Leticia Reyes has left the position for undisclosed reasons. Saipan Tribune learned this from hospital employees who asked not to be identified.<\/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-175054","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\/175054","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=175054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}