These have existed for over a decade and they are being compounded by the handiwork of an administration that is completely out of touch with its public.
In the case of CHC, it took years to transform a decent organization into a malfunctioning one. The exodus of physicians puts lives at risk and the administration’s response — to declare a state of emergency and justify another round of unilateral and thoughtless decisions — will jeopardize more lives.
The governor, to be sure, is trying, in his own way, to solve CHC’s problems. And his administration apparently believes that the answer to the departure of stateside physicians is to import them from the third world and put them under the supervision of mostly stateside physicians who remain on duty at the hospital. But medical training in the United States and the Philippines is different. Nurses from the Philippines or any other place hoping to work in a stateside hospital must pass NCLEX. It takes a few years to learn a new system, new rules and new practice.
What the Department of Public Health clearly needs is a new and better management. But instead of replacing the current team with more competent leaders, the governor will simply declare an emergency to justify side-stepping all rules. This is unwise. It also confirms that he, too, knows that his hospital management team is incompetent.
But again, his solution doesn’t make sense. It puts the government at increased risk from the legal problems of having non-certified, non-U.S. practicing doctors at the hospital. It places an additional burden on the remaining hospital staff. And it does nothing to remedy the other pressing problem of not having adequate equipment or supplies, medicines or safe and adequate blood, or trained staff to support these non-certified, non-qualified candidates from foreign countries.
The governor’s preferred solution does little else except convince voters that this administration cannot justify its continued existence.
The administration’s frequent use of emergency declarations supposedly allows for a quick and decisive response to a crisis without being bound by pesky rules. The crisis, however, was created precisely because rules have been consistently ignored. Hence, these emergency declarations amount to nothing else but feeble attempts to fix the unfixable. The most glaring example, of course, is CUC.
The more permanent solution is to pull out these government agencies from the quicksand of mediocrity and ineptitude by appointing qualified and competent managers, even if they don’t have an extended family of CNMI voters, and insulating them from politicking politicians. CUC now has at least three managers with impressive credentials, but how long before politicians will again overrule or ignore them to score short-term political gains?
CUC, in any case, remains under a state of emergency. CHC is next. CPA was also placed under the governor’s control. There were talks before of doing the same thing to CDA. Some also said that the intention was to run these agencies into the ground to allow the administration to take over.
So which autonomous agency is next? MVA? The Retirement Fund? Will the governor also declare martial law to rein in the crime spree plaguing the community?
Perhaps the most important question is, Will the public finally say “No mas”?
