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Muña: Incoming financial team will get billings to patients faster
With a candidate already chosen to become its financial chief and a financial management contractor hired to assist the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., patients of the Commonwealth Health Center will now start seeing faster and accurate billings.
“The incoming financial team will be a big help especially with the possibility of billing customers easier and faster and customers billing will be more accurate,” said CHCC chief executive officer Esther Muña.
With the selection of a chief financial officer and a contract signed with Pacific Island Health Officer Association or PIHOA, the search for a controller will complement the hospital’s longstanding problem with finances, Muña said.
This is on top of the financial team that Gov. Eloy S. Inos earlier provided to the corporation to help with its finances. Muña told Saipan Tribune the whole process is going well.
Muna said the contractor that PIHOA hired to help CHCC has full financial management experience as a financial chief.
“This will help because PIHOA will be making sure that the financial statements are there such as foundations and business plans. The focus here is to get them to work quickly because it is a short contract,” Muña said.
“Basically we have this financial team that we will be expecting in the next few months and the idea is for them to try to help us and fix the hospital financially,” she added.
Muna said she is glad PIHOA came in and that they have finally selected a CFO candidate.
“This hasn’t happened before. We never had this much help and, in addition, these are [with] the support of mostly grants,” she said.
She declined to identify the new CFO candidate for now.
The financial team will also help support with transitioning the electronic health record system to the outpatient clinic of the Commonwealth Health Center.
“We have the EHR already in the in-patient side and [we’re] working to move it into the outpatient. This will help because you can’t bill the patient for things you didn’t provide, so if you have it electronically it will be quicker,” Muña said.
