by Mindy Aguon

Guam - The Guam Memorial Hospital's finances can be described as being in a dismal state, much like the rest of the Government of Guam. While officials work to collect on receivables and bring the finances in the red, GMH chief financial officer Siva Karuppan says the management is still trying to find other ways to save money to help pay down overdue bills that are slowly being paid off.

One particular way is by digitalizing medical records, which is currently costing the hospital more than $120,000 a year. "Rather than store our medical records in a physical format, which is costing us $10,000 a month, and if we were to digitalize our records and shred the records that we don't need we would be saving a tremendous amount of money," he explained.

The hospital has already implemented some cost-cutting measures by putting out a request for proposal for less expensive transcription services and hiring a full-time ultra sound technician. (The latter has resulted in a savings of $10,000 a month.)

Meanwhile, the hospital board will once again be presented with management's proposal to close the outpatient unit of the Hemodialysis Unit, which is reportedly causing the hospital to lose more than a million dollars every year. Management needs the board's approval to begin the closure of that unit.

The board is expected to meet on Wednesday evening.