The Guam Memorial Hospital acknowledged Wednesday it's struggling to pay vendors...drawing strong concerns from oversight chair Speaker Therese Terlaje who calls it a potential "crisis."

The issue came up as GMH officials were called to the Congress Hall to answer questions about their Fiscal Year 2024 spending.

Chief Financial Officer Yuka Hechanova says hospitals across the country are facing similar challenges and are shutting down.

"We don't have that option," she said. "We can't close our pedes ward and not take any more pregnant mothers or close the er. In our research many hospitals are closing their doors just running the ER, just running their surgeries, just running clinics because they don't have the resources to keep it open. And we don't have a choice we have to so that's why we're really struggling right now, and it's really just this year. In the prior years, we had the luxury of having a lot of federal funding from COVID that really addressed all of the expenses that were coming down. Now the funding has run out, the expenses are still there if not higher than before and we're already losing nurses, the doctors need to be paid more, it's really becoming a challenge."

Speaker Therese Terlaje responded, "I think we have a crisis. When you have vendors not responding to the hospital that's a crisis and it puts to do all this kind of you know roundabout ways of getting less than your optimal product that you've been getting in the past. And I don't want to see that for us. I just hope that you meet with the governor again and whatever happens that they look at other funding."

GMG administrator Lillian Posadas said she met with the governor this week to also advise her that the corrections department has run out of money to pay the hospital for treating inmates.