\u201cAt the end of the day, we need to send our patients off-island.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 response when asked about a recent Office of the Public Auditor\u2019s report that showed that the CNMI Medical Referral Services Office overspent by $27 million from fiscal years 2018 to 2019.<\/p>\n
Torres said Monday that some may blame his administration and\/or the Legislature for this over-expenditure, but at its core, those that need to pursue off-island healthcare need to be taken care of.<\/p>\n
He hopes, though, that in the near future, the CNMI\u2019s patients will be able to receive better healthcare within the CNMI, but said that the current situation calls for patients to seek healthcare off-island.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s either you [give] upfront $15 million to the Legislature, or we [have] to go through a deficit. …We hope that this year and the years coming that we\u2019re able to provide better healthcare here for our patients\u2026but at the end of the day, we need to send our patients off-island,\u201d said Torres.<\/p>\n
When asked if this is a situation where the Legislature has underfunded the medical referral program or if the program itself overspent, Torres said \u201cit goes both ways,\u201d adding that some may play the blame game, but reiterated that for the CNMI\u2019s patients that need to seek off-island healthcare, their needs must be met. If the program needs to incur more of a deficit, Torres said he is \u201cwilling to take that risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do the blame gaming. We can blame the administration, \u2018Why not put $15 million in their budget?\u2019… We can blame the Legislature saying, \u2018Why are you not prioritizing [the program]?\u2019 \u2026I don\u2019t want to do name-blaming, [because] at the end of the day our patients that need to be sent [off-island] need to be sent, and if we need to incur more of a deficit I\u2019m willing to take that risk,\u201d said Torres.<\/p>\n
He said that he has been in close communication with Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther Mu\u00f1a to discuss providing more and better healthcare services for the CNMI\u2019s patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope through communication with Esther [Mu\u00f1a] that we\u2019re able to provide better services here so that medical referral program patients don\u2019t have to go off-island. …If we\u2019re able to cut half of [the number of patients that go off-island] in one year, that\u2019ll save us in the long run,\u201d said Torres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAt the end of the day, we need to send our patients off-island.\u201d That was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":352570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352588","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\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}