The CNMI Medical Referral program under the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is so underfunded that it\u2019s already in deficit right at the starting gate, according to program director Ron Sablan.<\/p>\n
He blames this extreme underfunding for the program for its over $15-million deficit. He pointed out that Medical Referral initially asks for a budget of $18 million for a fiscal year but eventually only gets a little over $2 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are blamed a lot for being in deficit [but] the misunderstanding on this deficit issue [is that] we become deficit [on] the first month of the fiscal year. Normally we get budgeted at, most probably, about 22% of what we requested, so we get into deficit right away,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Yet last year alone, the CNMI Medical Referral program sent out about 1,997 patients, costing about $15 million, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhy we\u2019re never funded for the amount we requested [is] beyond our control. But we stay within data that we use for all these years. And when I submit my budget, it is basically based on those data, giving a little room because we never know who\u2019s going to get sick or how many people we have to send out,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Fortunately, despite being underfunded, Sablan said the program has been able to continue to refer patients for medical treatments because of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 reprogramming authority. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe governor has 100% reprogramming authority under medical referral. So he\u2019s able to transfer funds from other departments to cover the cost, but again, if it was properly budgeted, the governor wouldn\u2019t have to do that, and would not hamper other departments and their budgets. But realistically, it\u2019s never happened. We\u2019ve always been underfunded,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He assured that the program is trying its best to minimize costs by reviewing whether the patient is really in need of a referral or not, but it doesn\u2019t cut costs significantly. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to work as best as we can to see whether this patient has been referred to something that is not necessary,\u201d Sablan said. <\/p>\n
Sablan told reporters that their funding covers costs for indigent patients up to an $80,000 limit, or covers the percentage of what the referred patient\u2019s insurance doesn\u2019t, and personnel. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur main purpose is to send people out based on medical conditions that cannot be provided locally. That\u2019s what it costs to do this and that\u2019s what we\u2019re bound to do,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The CNMI Medical Referral program under the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is so underfunded that it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316299","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\/316299","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}