by Mindy Aguon

Guam - The Guam Memorial Hospital is expected to submit its response to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Monday. CMS provided a lengthy report from its May re-certification survey of the hospital. Dozens of concerns were highlighted in the report from violations of patient rights, personal privacy, confidentiality and expired medicines and supplies to medical staff credentialing issues and failure to properly administer drugs.

Acting Hospital Administrator Rey Vega is confident that the hospital will not be de-certified from Medicare, which would result in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in federal reimbursements annually. Instead he's confident the compliance team will present adequate responses to each of the concerns that Vega says are being held.

"When one would refer the care and services that is provided, yes its true it's part of the nursing, but the gravity of those findings are of course, we take breach in confidentiality, breach of patients' rights seriously but not to the extent that there's an immediate threat to the patients life and safety," Vega told KUAM News.

Of note is that this isn't the first time the CMS has threatened to cut off participation of the program. Vega confirms a similar letter was sent last year following a site visit of the Skilled Nursing Facility in Barrigada Heights, but the concerns were addressed to the satisfaction of the CMS.