Organization-wise the public corporation is not whole yet, since Gov. Benigno R. Fitial has yet to appoint members to the advisory board but Villagomez told reporters, “we can now already start to function” as corporation.
He and other Public Health officials, Villagomez said, are now working closely with acting Gov. Eloy S. Inos, the Office of Management and Budget and the Finance Department to “look at the over-all projection.”
“We are looking at both revenues coming in and revenues from previous years in terms of the projected money that will come to the department,” Villagomez said.
He noted that their collection effort has been doing well.
But everything will depend on the cash flow, he added.
Medicaid funds, for example, usually come at the end of the year, he said.
“Self-paid,” he added, is much bigger now than before.
These are the people who have the ability to pay hospital bills but because of the current financial situation have given up their health insurance.
According to Villagomez, collection from people without insurance “is the big unknown right now.”
The Commonwealth Health Center, he said, collects between $20 million and $25 million a year.
The $5 million in seed money plus the $20 million projected revenue, Villagomez said, “kind of bring us to where the previous budget had always been, which was about $30 million.”
CHC can collect up to $12 million a year from Medicare, he added.
The biggest difference now, is that as a corporation, the hospital will be a vendor of Medicaid, he said.
“In the past Medicaid is under our department. And because we were appropriated money from the Legislature there was never a big impetus from the Medicaid side to pay the hospital. But now that we are totally a vendor, we’re providing Medicaid service we will be making sure that Medicaid pays us,” he said.
