‘Of $5M worth of billings, GMCA collected only $223,000 in one year’

The Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. board of trustees was disappointed yesterday after learning that the agency it contracted to help boost revenue collection was only able to bring in a small percentage of what it was expected to collect for the hospital.
Board trustee Roy Rios could not hide his dismay when told during yesterday’s meeting that only about $223,000 has been actually collected by the Guam Marianas Collection Agency for the corporation in 2013.

This amount, it was learned, is only a fraction of the $5 million worth of billings referred to the company last year. The collections data for other years were not immediately available yesterday.

According to interim chief financial officer Cora Ada, she’s still waiting for GMCA to provide all the information the board has been asking about the collections.

“They only gave me [the fiscal year] 2013 [data] and I told them [GMCA] that what we need is from the beginning as to how much worth of bills we gave them and how much has been paid, and the pending ones so we can account for those as well,” Ada said.

This revelation further disappointed the trustees.

“Why are we asking them for that [record]? We should have that. We should know when they walked out here with any billings that belong to us. We need to know that,” said trustee Phillip Mendiola-Long, only to learn that CHCC’s own collection office doesn’t have the information.

Rios was equally alarmed: “So are you saying that the GMCA just walked in here, picked a bunch of boxes and then left…that’s why you can’t tell us how much [billing] we gave them? Is that what actually happened?”

During the discussion, it was further disclosed that the $5 million worth of billings referred to GMCA is possibly part of the $18 million receivables in CHCC’s books that was earlier reported by management.

Looking at the actual collection, Rios said the total seems to indicate that the company is “not as aggressive” as expected. He asked for a full report on the company’s performance since the start, for consideration at the next board meeting.

Board vice chair Pete dela Cruz also expressed concern about the billings’ statute of limitations, or until what year certain billings can be collected from debtors.

It was earlier disclosed that GMCA’s performance is up for evaluation and plans were bared to open the contract to other agencies.

GMCA does the billing and collection work for the hospital. It uses its own financial system and only gets paid when it actually collects money for the hospital. GMCA’s contract provides a 25-percent fee for what it collects and a 10-percent fee for billing works. (Moneth G. Deposa)