A Rota senator is playing referee between the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and Star Marianas Air on issues relating to interisland medical referrals and balances owed the airline.<\/p>\n
According to Sen. Teresita Santos (R-Rota), CHCC owes Star Marianas Air about $96,000. <\/p>\n
Yet the senator is also urging Star Marianas to lift its rule that requires upfront cash payments to confirm reservations of those travelling for inter-island medical referrals. <\/p>\n
She said not doing so would put referral patients at risk of losing their chance to travel to Saipan for treatment.<\/p>\n
Santos was prompted to make the appeal to Star Marianas at the urging of CHCC chief executive officer Esther Mu\u00f1a in a letter dated Dec. 19, 2017.<\/p>\n
She said in her letter that losing a seat critical for the prompt treatment of referral patients from Rota resets the process of securing spending authorization and approval to avoid questionable discrepancies.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpon booking, CHCC must perform necessary procedures such as producing a travel authorization and having it approved. CHCC must also then prepare the payment for the travel through CHCC\u2019s financial system, obtain approvals, and then print the check,\u201d Mu\u00f1a wrote, reiterating the lengthy process.<\/p>\n
In the same letter, Mu\u00f1a ultimately asked Santos to assist CHCC with the issue. <\/p>\n
In response, Santos, in a letter to Star Marianas president Shaun Christian dated Jan. 17, 2018, informed him of CHCC\u2019s situation. Star Marianas representative Joe Cruz later met with the senator last Jan. 15, 2018.<\/p>\n
According to Santos, Cruz informed her that CHCC owes Star Marianas about $96,000.<\/p>\n
Upon learning this, Santos sent a letter dated Jan. 23, 2018, to both Christian and Mu\u00f1a to urge them to discuss the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, these concerns would be addressed between [Star Marianas] and CHCC,\u201d said Santos.
\nMu\u00f1a did not immediately respond to Saipan Tribune\u2019s request to comment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Rota senator is playing referee between the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. and Star Marianas Air…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[666,19894,5450,122],"class_list":["post-268823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-chcc","tag-joe-cruz","tag-star-marianas-air","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268823","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}