Inos joined healthcare corporation chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta in a tour of the hospital.
“We’ve got to work together because this is our hospital and this serves our people,” Inos said.
He noted that the corporation is making a lot of progress in addressing the hospital’s financial situation.
The hospital, Babauta said, has over $50 million in receivables but only a small portion can be collected.
Inos said he is aware that the corporation has already hired a firm that will look exclusively into collections.
The corporation was provided $5 million in seed money. The defunct Department of Public Health received $32 million in fiscal year 2011.
For comparison, Inos said the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. also went through a difficult transition period as it became a separate entity. It used to be part of the Department of Public Works.
“I experienced that first hand because I chaired that CUC board and it had nothing,” he recalled.
He said they inherited a big deficit.
“We can learn from that experience. We don’t want to be in that kind of situation right now, and we have to be diligent and resilient about what we want to do to make these things work,” Inos said.
In a separate interview, Senate President Paul A. Manglona said they are seriously considering amending the law that created the healthcare corporation as suggested by Babaua.
Manglona, Ind.-Rota, said the former governor Babauta “is very capable of running the healthcare corporation.”
Inos said the administration and Babauta have ideas on what needs to be changed in the law or P.L. 16-51.
“I’m not going to speak for [Babauta], but I know that his ultimate goal is to make sure things are done correctly here. When that time comes we will submit proposed amendments to the statute to make sure things are in the right place,” Inos said.
Seventh member
The healthcare corp.’s board of trustees has one remaining vacancy now that Dr. Mike Deary has been named director of medical affairs which makes him one of the three ex-officio members.
The other board member are Joaquin S. Torres, Roy T. Rios, Anthony H. Aguon and Pedro Dela Cruz. Babauta, the CEO, is the other ex-officio member.
Dr. Daniel Lamar, the acting director of medical affairs was also an acting board member, but he chose to remain as the medical director for public health and cannot hold both positions.
According to Lamar, “We have many challenges right now, but we are both optimistic that the current transformation to a healthcare corp. will ultimately serve the commonwealth well.”
Lamar said he will remain an advisor to the board primarily when it comes to public health programs and issues.
The board’s seventh member is supposed to be selected by the non-physician healthcare professionals of the corporation.
“The process of selection is under way and the non-physician healthcare professionals will have an opportunity to vote for the seventh ex-officio board member,” Lamar said.
