HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The Guam Memorial Hospital Authority board of trustees voted through Resolution 2024-28 to write off about $5 million in uncollected patient accounts receivable.
“The bulk of it, $4.2 million, is from unbilled Medicare or couldn’t collect on Medicare stemming from 1997. But (the) majority of the uncollected Medicare is up ($3.7 million) in 2017. So slowly, but surely, we are trying to clean up the books on these uncollected receivables,” GMHA trustee Edgar Aguilar said during a board meeting held last week.
Aguilar, who has a background in finance, gave kudos to the GMHA finance team.
“I congratulate (Chief Financial Officer Yuka Hechanova) and her team for monitoring this and making the tough decision on what to write off. And I know we are going to write off more uncollected receivables in the future,” Aguilar said.
Resolution 2024-28 was approved unanimously by the board without further discussion.
The board also was presented a breakdown of the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget.
“The 2025 operating revenues are projected at $133.7 million. We have Department of Corrections appropriations for $3.7 million and from the governor’s executive budget we’re getting $23.3 million from the pharmaceutical fund, $8.5 million from the general fund, federal grants $20.3 million. And the projected revenues right now are $189.5 million,” Hechanova said.
But with projected expenses at roughly $232 million, the hospital foresees a budget shortfall.
“So our projected shortfall for FY 25 is $42.5 million. I also added, so far to date, our projected shortfall for this current fiscal year, $26.8 million,” Hechanova said.
That puts the hospital in the hole at $69.3 million at the start of fiscal 2025, she said.
A breakdown of the fiscal 2025 budget shows a bulk of the expenses are related to personnel, $132,525,184. This will pay employee salaries, overtime, medical and dental insurance and fringe benefits.
“For the personnel budget, we have, of course, again primarily in the direct patient care areas with 80% of our personnel budget going to those areas and indirect patient care areas gets 20%,” she said.
Lately, GMH has contracted travel nurses to augment the nursing shortage, but it comes with a hefty price tag, the CFO said.
“We are increasing our budget for the travel nurses. And also the nurse pay plan is going out (to) be adjusted by 18%, so that’s also factored in,” Hechanova said.
Hospital operations needs $64,827,910 to cover contractual obligations, supplies and materials, minor equipment purchases, miscellaneous purchases and capital improvements, she said.
“For operations, the increase is mainly just to account for the projects that will happen using the American Rescue Plan Act money,” she said.
The sum of $4,643,404 is needed for utilities costs: power, water, telephone and fuel.
The chief financial officer said, between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal 2025, the increase is $46 million.
Hechanova, who shared a comparison of actual expenses from fiscal 2021 to current, said it shows things are only getting more expensive.
“The expenses have really been rising and this is primarily – I’ve said this many times – from the impacts of the pandemic and our nursing shortage has just gotten much worse. We are also having to pay our physicians more and the cost of supplies has increased tremendously,” she said.
The main factors for the $46M increase are the Nurse Pay Plan increase, the increased retirement rate contribution, the increased use of travel nurses, increased physician pay and costs of supplies.
A motion to endorse the budget and submit it to the Legislature was approved unanimously by the board.
Guam Memorial Hospital is seen on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024 in Tamuning.
