The Kagman Community Health Center has eased the workload of the Commonwealth Health Center, the CNMI\u2019s lone hospital, providing healthcare services to the people on the eastern side of Saipan, according to chief executive officer Vince Castro.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that people who live in Kagman and its nearby areas now have their medical checkup and other healthcare services at the KCHC instead of going all the way to the hospital on Navy Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough our work, we keep a lot of people out of the hospital, out of the [emergency room] when they are sick. It saves the hospital a lot of money,\u201d Castro said. \u201cWe have to keep providing healthcare services. We can look at other things for us to settle here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed out that KCHC is a non-profit organization that get most of its funding from the federal government, adding that some hospitals in the U.S. mainland provide funding to federally qualified health centers.<\/p>\n
KCHC re-opened last Saturday after nearly two weeks of closure due to an expired land license. They began seeing patients again on Monday.<\/p>\n
The Governor\u2019s Office, through the Department of Public Lands, in coordination with the CNMI Office of the Attorney General and Governor\u2019s Office legal counsel Gil Birnbrich, transferred the land license to KCHC.<\/p>\n
Senate President Arnold I. Palacios (R-Saipan) said that CHCC agreeing to turn over the facility turns a new leaf in their partnership with KCHC. \u201cI\u2019m very hopeful that we can have a new beginning in this relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cCHCC and KCHC will have to figure out how to join hands. CHCC plays a major role in [CNMI] healthcare and KCHC is an integral part [of that]. I\u2019m glad that we at the Legislature had the opportunity to spend time and discuss this issue publicly,\u201d said Palacios.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, it was a crisis level situation, but we\u2019re happy to see that we\u2019ve gone beyond that and resolved this issue with the facility,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
KCHC-CHCC partnership<\/strong> \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean now that we\u2019re operating separately. It doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t need them [CHCC]. Everybody goes to CHC because they are the only hospital. We need them to also take care of our patients that need emergency services.\u201d<\/p>\n She added KCHC, which has been operating for five years now, wouldn\u2019t be where they are right now without CHCC\u2019s help. \u201cWe will always remain partners with CHCC. We could have not done this without them. We were [grant] co-applicants with them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re the child and we have grown. We wanted to be on our own but we still welcome our partnership with CHCC. We will continue our partnership with CHCC,\u201d Palacios said.<\/p>\n She said KCHC would also get additional equipment to provide better healthcare services to the people of Kagman and nearby areas. \u201cWe\u2019re still working in getting our equipment here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have some equipment that were donated by anonymous doctors to our clinic. We\u2019re just waiting for a location to start bringing them in. We thank our generous donors,\u201d added Palacios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Kagman Community Health Center has eased the workload of the Commonwealth Health Center, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[666,92,285,67],"class_list":["post-276106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chcc","tag-commonwealth-health-center","tag-kchc","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276106","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nKCHC board chair Velma Palacios said they are also looking forward to their continued partnership with the hospital and CHCC. \u201cWe also need CHCC, we\u2019ve always said that. They are the lone hospital and we want to continue this partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n