Sen. Teresita A. Santos (Ind-Rota) is urging Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther L. Mu\u00f1a to defer the implementation of recent changes to policies that, according to the senator, will only saddle Rota patients with additional financial and emotional burdens. <\/p>\n
Santos wrote Mu\u00f1a last Thursday, asking the CEO to reconsider the policies involving non-emergency intra-CNMI referral and about patient cost-sharing until such time that the CNMI can identify a steady and reliable funding source for their patients.<\/p>\n
As of press time yesterday, Saipan Tribune was still awaiting comments from Mu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n
Santos said a paragraph of the purpose section in CHCC\u2019s non-emergency intra-CNMI referral policies states, \u201cIntra-CNMI medical travel assistance for patients of the CHCC is designed to help patients overcome the access disparities caused by geography.\u201d The purpose section further states that \u201cIntra-CNMI medical travel assistance is not intended to bestow upon\u2026Rota residents a benefit which is not available to the residents of Saipan\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Santos said that while the stated intended goal of overcoming access disparities imposed by Rota\u2019s geographical location is laudable, she takes issue with the second sentence of the policy, which asserts that Rota residents have somehow been enjoying a benefit otherwise unavailable to Saipan residents.<\/p>\n
She said the second sentence contradicts the stated objective of the first sentence by ignoring the main reason why this benefit applies to Rota residents and not to the Saipan residents\u2014overcoming access disparities imposed by geography.<\/p>\n
Santos said everyone is aware that Rota Health Center does not have the same professional staff, medical services, medical equipment and other things, that is comparable to that of the Commonwealth Health Center on Saipan. Therefore patients from Rota must be referred to Saipan to avail of those services that are already available to Saipan residents, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould the RHC be at par with [CHC], our patients will no longer need to travel to Saipan to seek medical care,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
On the patient cost-sharing policy, Santos said it states that \u201cthe CHCC may elect to reduce or waive patient or escort cost-sharing responsibilities for referral assistance from\u2026Rota to Saipan during a State of Public Health Emergency as declared by the governor pursuant to CNMI Law.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senator said that, in her view, the language of the policy to justify the reduction or waiver of patient or escort cost-sharing should be absolute rather than discretionary. Instead of saying \u201cThe CHCC may elect\u2026,\u201d she suggests revising the language by using the word \u201cshall\u201d and not \u201cmay elect to reduce or.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said this is not the right time to implement such provisions of the policy for these compelling reasons.<\/p>\n
For one thing, the senator said, the COVID-19 pandemic is still wreaking economic havoc in the lives of Rota residents. \u201cMany are still suffering from either being furloughed or have been terminated from their jobs, coupled with the eminent possibility of another reduction-in-force if our coffers do not improve in the near future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Santos said many Rota residents are experiencing difficulty feeding their families without imposing additional medical financial burdens on them.<\/p>\n
She said Rota\u2019s geographic location also means that shipment of goods to Rota cost a lot more than goods on Saipan and thus the cost of living is extremely high.<\/p>\n
The senator added that many families are still trying to recover from the devastating economic effects of the typhoons that have ravaged the islands.<\/p>\n
Santos also noted that the local law that created a medical stipend for people receiving medical treatment on Saipan has been abruptly ceased. \u201cThis cripples the delegation\u2019s ability to help our people seek the medical services that are not available on Rota,\u201d Santos said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Teresita A. Santos (Ind-Rota) is urging Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther L….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":335325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[666],"class_list":["post-339871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339871","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}