While the public lobbying over where Guam's hospital of the future will be built continues, the Guam Medical Association (GMA) believes it's time to also talk about improving the local health care system as a whole.

The GMA invited senators to an informal discussion event at the Hyatt Sunday night.

Co-organizer, Dr. Hoa Nguyen, says one top recommendation would be to require employers to provide mandatory health insurance for their middle class workers who don't qualify for medicare or MIP.

Dr. Nguyen said, “That's a big segment of our population that right now is swimming, we need to provide something for them to make sure that they follow up with their primary care management.”

Another key suggestion is to have Public Health's Clinical Services and Community Health Centers run by a physician, and perhaps even have those services privatized.

“You cannot have a non-health care personnel run a health care service for the people of Guam. You cannot make the decision because you don't know the system, you don't know the health care. So we suggest that they need to have a qualified physician that knows the business of healthcare, or a nursing staff or nurse practitioner that have the knowledge or background to kinda run the program,” Dr. Nguyen said.

A third priority is to address the severe nursing shortage.

He says there are just five professors for UOG’s nursing program, which is well short of what's needed to churn out the amount of nursing professionals the island needs.

Dr. Nguyen says about ten senators or their staff representatives showed up last night.

The GMA is planning more such events to keep the dialogue going.