At various times in the last several weeks, legislators have commented about the deteriorating conditions at the hospital, promising to write letters, probe deeper and maybe even conduct an oversight hearing on the matter — all for naught.
One legislator has written many letters seeking clarification on whether housing benefits for hospital staff has been statutorily extended. To his credit, the public auditor declined to interpret the law. The legislator, for his part, misses the point. Even if housing benefits have been statutorily ended, he should introduce a law to extend it. This is but one way to recruit and keep good medical personnel, which, by the way, extends beyond doctors to scores of other positions that are necessary for doctors to do their job.
Another legislator promises an oversight hearing every week. There doesn’t seem to be a need for all the hoopla associated with an oversight. It shouldn’t take much for these legislators to sit down, agree there is a problem, identify funding, and appropriate the funds or cause some reprogramming to occur. This isn’t a power outage. This is life and death.
There is, to cite an example, a crying need for more help in respiratory therapy, radiology and the laboratory, including nursing. What good is it to have doctors in the emergency room with no way to correctly diagnose the problem when it takes hours to get radiology to take pictures or ultrasound — or if it takes hours for lab personnel to take and then deliver results? The emergency room then becomes a holding tank, unable to move patients in or out. Meanwhile, patients suffer as they wait for results. Besides the need for equipment and information long available to hospital and government officials, CHC also needs supplies and more qualified personnel.
At some point, in addition to the false representations made by recruiters, hospital management fails to provide adequate support in terms of policy, equipment and supplies, rendering CHC’s ability to practice good medicine nearly impossible.
How long will the current dismal conditions be permitted to continue?
Most of the medical professionals that remain at CHC perform Herculean tasks each day, but that doesn’t advance the cause of medical practice in the CNMI, and it cannot be sustained.
