Public auditor calls Guam Memorial Hospital’s reasoning for paying doctors double “cute”

We've told you about the Public Auditor sounding the alarm, claiming the hospital's accounts have been showing some double vision, doctors allegedly getting paid twice for their services.

But the hospital administrator insists there's no malpractice here, accusing the audit findings of being a misdiagnosis.

The tension is palpable as the two sides operate on vastly different conclusions. 

“It was just disappointing. Although we provided the opa team the information they had requested in a document format,some of them came to some conclusion without really making sure and verifying some of the mathematical computations they put together  was an error,” said Guam Memorial Hospital Administrator and CEO, Lillian Perez Posadas. 

Posadas, on the recent audit released by the Office of Public Accountability. On Thursday, GMHA issued a release  firmly rejecting what they call "incorrect" and "misleading" allegations in the audit.

Public Auditor BJ Cruz reacted to the release, saying, “It's really cute the way that they put it. That they're getting double payment for the same work.  It's not double payment for the same work, it's double payment.”

“The comment and the conclusion that we're double paying the doctors, it is untrue, it's inaccurate, we pay the doctors for the different roles and responsibilities that we tasked them to,” said Posadas. 

“When you hire a doctor to be an administrator, they get a completely separate contract. The thing is they're no longer seeing the 20 patients, because they have their administrative duties, their initial contract is not truly being fulfilled. They're turning away patients because they're doing admin work,” said Cruz. 

“We pay the doctors for the different roles and responsibilities that we take them to. They are physician/clinician providers who take care of the patients, but at the same time we also ask them to help us out such as writing polices that we need to get out or review. We need them to be engaged, those are all part of the requirements to be TMS certified, and if we're pursuing accreditation we want to make sure the physicians are engaged, it's an incentive,” Posadas said. 

“If they're gonna hire a doctor, hire a doctor. If you want to hire an administrator, hire an administrator. But don't them to do both and do a s*** job on both,” said Cruz.  

 Senator Sabrina Salas Matanane, Chairperson of the legislative Committee on Health and Veterans Affairs also noted the concerning numbers calling such payments 'outrageous.'

Posadas said she has reached out to Sen. Mantanane, who is the Health Committee Chair to sit and meet and discuss in more detail about the audit report.

“Hopefully we can help her have a clear understanding of really what's going on in the recruitment and retention of these physicians,” said Posadas. 

Sen. Matanane will be able to get those details as she will be calling a GMH Oversight scheduled later this month.