CHCC to United: Reconsider flight cuts

Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Esther L. Muña is hoping that United Airlines would reconsider its decision to reduce its Saipan-Guam daily flights for the sake of CNMI patients.

In a letter to United Airlines CEO Oscar Muñoz and president Scott Kirby, Muña detailed the challenges faced by hospital and medical referral patients in getting needed off-island medical attention.

United plans to cut its number of flights from Guam to Saipan from more than four daily to once daily and, instead of a code-share agreement with United Express, will fly a jet that will ply both territories once a day. United earlier said that it would be ending its “relationship with Cape Air service in Micronesia,” including its five-time daily Guam-Saipan service, as well as the Rota-Guam and Rota-Saipan service, effective May 31, 2018.

Muña said patients needing medical care are faced with the challenge of the CNMI’s geographical location. “One of the most significant burdens is addressing emergency medical problems and identifying appropriate treatment in a geographically large, but sparsely populate region of the Pacific Ocean.”

The CNMI is located 137 miles north of Guam, one of three U.S. territories in the Pacific, and 2,900 miles east of the Philippines. It is also 3,700 miles west of the State of Hawaii, with Honolulu being the nearest U.S. tertiary medical center for referral.

Muña said United’s announcement of having one daily flight from Saipan to Guam would create problems for CNMI patients. “[It] significantly impedes the CNMI from getting our patients to emergency specialty care they need.”

She added that the one daily flight would also affect critically ill newborns and children that require special medical care as most of them doesn’t have passports required to travel to Rady’s Children’s Hospital in San Diego, California via Japan.

Rady’s is the only children’s hospital in the West Coast and in the U.S. mainland that accepts the CNMI’s Medicaid reimbursements.

“It takes more than two weeks to expedite a passport in the CNMI. Emergency treatment for a newborn requires a U.S. domestic flight path to care,” said Muña, who added that the hospital’s understaffed medical personnel are also affected since they would often travel with their young patients.

Laboratory services—inbound blood shipments and supplies, and outbound specimens—would also be delayed according to Muña.

“I am not privy to the inner workings of United Airlines’ business models or decision-making processes, but I urge you to consider the impact the decision to reduce flights from Saipan to Guam will have on the lives and safety of CNMI residents, especially those newborns and children who have no alternative,” ended Muña.