CHC was built in 1986.
“Unfortunately, the ARRA funding does not cover hospitals. In fact, that’s one of the first things that I asked because we have a lot of infrastructure needs that we have to address here. We need to replace our generators. We need to replace our boilers, our oxygen machine. Things like that,” he told the Variety in an interview on Friday.
ARRA, or the stimulus law, provides grants to healthcare facilities but only those certified as federally qualified healthcare centers.
“ARRA funding is good if we have what they call federally qualified healthcare center or Section 3030 community health center. We don’t have one,” said Untalan. “As far as any direct infrastructure funding from ARRA, we don’t have any.”
Untalan said the Department of Public Health is hoping that although ARRA is not available for the hospital’s use, the CNMI’s yearly capital improvement project funds could be channeled for their use.
“We’re trying to work with [Commerce Secretary] Mike Ada [who is also the head of the CNMI stimulus grant writing team] to see if we can use funds from the capital improvement projects. If other CNMI projects are approved through ARRA, it would free up the CIP for us and use it to help us mitigate some of our infrastructure needs,” he said.
Untalan said Public Health was the first to submit application for grants under ARRA but was told that the funds cannot be used for hospital improvements.
Much of the department’s annual budget from the local government goes to personnel and operations.
Untalan said there’s not even spare cash to fund special projects like protecting the community against the H1NI virus.
