Medical Referral Services director Ronald D. Sablan took exception yesterday to a political advertisement that implies that his office is \u201cpoliticized\u201d merely because it is under the Office of the Governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe assumption that the Medical Referral Services needs to be depoliticized is not true. To me, that is stating something that is totally opposite of the way it is,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n
He was referring to an ad placed by the Hofschneider-Yumul campaign in both newspapers last Friday, titled \u201cYour Health Matters.\u201d In one of its statements, the HY campaign promised to \u201cdepoliticize Medical Referral.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sablan said he does not want to dragged into the politics of this Friday\u2019s gubernatorial runoff election but since the the political ad brought up the issue, he wants to clarify why MRS is under the Governor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedical Referral patients are unforeseen and you cannot estimate and you cannot project [how many patients you\u2019re going to have in a year], so the only way for the government to really be able to accommodate this is that the governor has the expenditure authority to reprogram funds to be able to fund the requirements of this office,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sablan pointed out that decisions made by MRS are not made by the governor or anyone in the Legislature. MRS has its own medical referral committee composed of a team of six doctors and Sablan himself making the decisions whether patients are eligible or not for medical referral.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur rules and regulations state that if we ran out of appropriated funds, then MRS operation should shut down. Based on our budget that gets appropriated for MRS in the last five years, it is actually less than 30 percent of what our expenditures really are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
How then does MRS gets additional funding if its expenditures surpass the budget allocated for it?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the reason why it was transferred to the Governor\u2019s Office because the governor has that expenditure authority to take surplus funds from other departments to be able to pay for this. Otherwise, patients here would be denied at other hospitals off-island,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that MRS has rebuilt its credibility in the last few years among off-island hospitals. Without that credibility, patients wouldn\u2019t be accepted during off-island referrals, he said.<\/p>\n
Sablan also noted that MRS has decreased its expenditures since he took over as its head. <\/p>\n
Before he came into office, MRS\u2019 expenditure was over $11 million a year. In comparison, expenditures in the past three fiscal years have ranged between $5 million to $6 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they say that MRS needs to be depoliticized, I don\u2019t understand why? If anybody knows how we operate, nobody will need to say that. We transferred because the governor felt that he can reprogram funds\u2014actual expenditure funds\u2014to pay for this program,\u201d Sablan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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