Following the stabbing of the only physician on Rota, Dr. Francois Claasens, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. will be temporarily assigning a doctor to the island on a rotating basis each week.<\/p>\n
CHCC chief executive officer Esther Mu\u00f1a, who was on Rota yesterday, said that licensed nurse practitioner Norman Berthiume has taken over most of Claasens\u2019 day-to-day duties at the Rota Health Center since Saturday.<\/p>\n
For the moment, Mu\u00f1a said that CHCC will be providing mid-level providers or physicians to work at the Rota clinic every week until a permanent doctor is recruited to serve the island.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the meantime CHCC is also looking for more permanent physicians. Whoever the midlevel provider or physician at RHC is, they will have access to the ER doctors at the [Commonwealth Health Center] 24\/7 and they will assist them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Muna said even before last week\u2019s incident, CHCC was already looking to hire a new doctor for Rota to pair with the 60-year-old Claasens.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore the incident, Dr. Claasens interviewed the physician we\u2019re hiring. So we\u2019re trying to hire earlier so we will have two physicians on Rota because Dr. Claasens was only by himself. We are also hopeful that Dr. Claasens will be back so that both physicians can work together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The new physician, whose name Muna didn\u2019t want to disclose, is a general practitioner, which is similar to Claasens\u2019 line of work. He was expected to come in May, but due to the current circumstances, Mu\u00f1a has asked him to come sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe might actually come earlier than expected and we had a conversation with him to let him know that [Claasens\u2019 stabbing] was an isolated incident and it was on Rota and we\u2019re encouraging him to be on Rota. We also informed him that it is a safe place,\u201d Mu\u00f1a said.<\/p>\n
Claasens, who was stabbed on Saturday, remains in critical condition at the Guam Naval Hospital and physicians treating him there earlier said he only has a 20-percent survival rate after allegedly being brutally stabbed by William Abraham Kapono Mathewson.<\/p>\n
Muna hope that Claasens will recover and a second doctor will soon be at hand to serve the Rota community.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue the recruitment and don\u2019t know the situation yet but we are hopeful that Dr. Claasens recovers quickly. In addition, but not certain yet, if everything is clear and if the physician is willing, we may soon have a midlevel provider at RHC,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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