The government budget bill, or H.B. 16-169, appropriated $39,491,105, including Compact-Impact and other outside funding resources, for Public Health.
The department said it still faces major challenges in financing health care delivery.
Its proposed FY 2009 budget is just less than a million higher than what it spent in 2007, but lower than previous years’ expenditures.
The 2008 Health Data Report released last week also indicates that since 2003, Public Health has been controlling its expenditures and made “significant efforts to maintain critical services in a world of soaring health care costs.”
The data showed that from 2003 to 2006, the department’s budget did not go lower than $40 million.
The department received its largest budget — $44.7 million —in 2005.
Public Health Secretary Joseph Kevin Villagomez, in a press conference on Thursday, said funding remains a challenge in the delivery of quality care.
According to the department’s report, its 2007 health care spending represented a significant portion of the overall government budget, 22 percent, and with the government’s decreasing revenue collections, there will be “inevitable reduction in health care spending as well.”
Amid the islands’ deepening financial crisis, the report stated that there will be an increasing pressure to find solutions that will somehow improve the current situation.
