MR’s Ron Sablan: We have always been underfunded

The CNMI Medical Referral program under the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is so underfunded that it’s already in deficit right at the starting gate, according to program director Ron Sablan.

He blames this extreme underfunding for the program for its over $15-million deficit. He pointed out that Medical Referral initially asks for a budget of $18 million for a fiscal year but eventually only gets a little over $2 million.

“We are blamed a lot for being in deficit [but] the misunderstanding on this deficit issue [is that] we become deficit [on] the first month of the fiscal year. Normally we get budgeted at, most probably, about 22% of what we requested, so we get into deficit right away,” he said.

Yet last year alone, the CNMI Medical Referral program sent out about 1,997 patients, costing about $15 million, he said.

“Why we’re never funded for the amount we requested [is] beyond our control. But we stay within data that we use for all these years. And when I submit my budget, it is basically based on those data, giving a little room because we never know who’s going to get sick or how many people we have to send out,” he said.

Fortunately, despite being underfunded, Sablan said the program has been able to continue to refer patients for medical treatments because of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres’ reprogramming authority.

“The governor has 100% reprogramming authority under medical referral. So he’s able to transfer funds from other departments to cover the cost, but again, if it was properly budgeted, the governor wouldn’t have to do that, and would not hamper other departments and their budgets. But realistically, it’s never happened. We’ve always been underfunded,” he said.

He assured that the program is trying its best to minimize costs by reviewing whether the patient is really in need of a referral or not, but it doesn’t cut costs significantly.

“We try to work as best as we can to see whether this patient has been referred to something that is not necessary,” Sablan said.

Sablan told reporters that their funding covers costs for indigent patients up to an $80,000 limit, or covers the percentage of what the referred patient’s insurance doesn’t, and personnel.

“Our main purpose is to send people out based on medical conditions that cannot be provided locally. That’s what it costs to do this and that’s what we’re bound to do,” he said.