Medical referral program owes vendors, providers nearly $2M

Even though the number of referrals has dropped by 60 percent, the CNMI Medical Referral Program still owes its vendors and providers close to $2 million, according to medical referral director Ron Sablan on Friday.

At a meeting called by the Senate Standing Committee for Health and Welfare to address the state of emergency at the Commonwealth Health Center, Sablan said the cash shortage of the local referral program has become so untenable that he has become used to dealing with frustrated vendors and providers.

“I go through this exercise every two weeks of dealing with providers and trying to pacify them. Every two weeks I have to deal with whether I have airline tickets for patients waiting for referral. Then we have to cancel appointments of patients that have been confirmed two weeks ago because we don’t have tickets. It takes time again to reschedule,” he said.

Sablan said the medical referral program’s arrears were at $1.8 million as of June 22.

“The number of referrals has dropped as much as 60 percent. But bills are still coming in. We have 200 patients waiting to be referred. Sometimes we get blamed for not sending patients on time,” he said.

Cash flow remains the program’s biggest problem, Sablan said.

“A lot depends on cash availability. Sometimes I get called and get cussed at. It’s all about the cash-flow issue. The secretary of Finance is trying her best to try and cope with us,” he said.

Responding to Sen. Francisco Q. Cruz’s (R-Saipan) question whether the program sends out patients who have no chances of survival, Sablan said the program cannot by itself determine whether a patient could be saved by being referred or not. He said their responsibility is to make arrangements for patients who need off-island treatment.

“Once a case is reviewed and approved by a committee, we send a patient when an appointment is confirmed. Our responsibility is to be able to assess which patients need to be sent out that cannot be provided services here on Saipan. Unfortunately we’re restricted by certain issues like the availability of providers where we can send patients to or ability to provide airline tickets or subsistence allowance for patients that we need to send out. We don’t want to send out patients and they’ll be stranded out there. We need to make sure funding is available before we send out patients,” he said.