Sen. Joaquin Borja (Ind-Tinian) seeks to change the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.\u2019s board of trustees from an \u201cadvisory\u201d to a \u201cgoverning\u201d one, and to take away from the governor the authority to appoint the chief executive officer and give that power to the board instead. He also proposes to reduce the number of trustees from seven to five.<\/p>\n
The current advisory CHC board does not see eye to eye with CEO Esther Mu\u00f1a on a number of issues, such that Gov. Eloy S. Inos now feels compelled to mediate.<\/p>\n
Borja\u2019s Senate Bill 18-52 could be acted on in this afternoon\u2019s session, wherein senators are also expected to pass a House concurrent resolution on the CNMI government\u2019s revenues and resources for fiscal year 2015.<\/p>\n
The bill amends certain sections of Public Law 16-51 or the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. Act of 2008.<\/p>\n
Borja wants to \u201cempower\u201d the CHC board of trustees \u201cto make policies and perform all acts necessary and expedient to ensure the delivery of quality care in a financially responsible manner\u201d for the CNMI people.<\/p>\n
He said it is imperative that a qualified group of individuals, rather than an individual, make the decisions for the corporation.<\/p>\n
The Tinian senator\u2019s bill also requires CHC to \u201cprovide at all times medical referral services, including the payment of full airfare and transportation costs of patients and escorts on Tinian and Rota who are referred by a licensed physician to the Commonwealth Health Center for further medical services or testing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill also changes from monthly to quarterly CHC\u2019s issuance of public financial statements.<\/p>\n
S.B. 18-52 also requires the chief financial officer to have at least a master\u2019s degree in business administration and five years of experience in healthcare finances. The CFO, according to the bill, shall have custody of all of CHC\u2019s money, among other things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Joaquin Borja (Ind-Tinian) seeks to change the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.\u2019s board of trustees from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,91,26,140],"class_list":["post-37063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-business-3","tag-chc","tag-cnmi","tag-commonwealth-healthcare-corp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}