Healthcare corp. payroll short by $200K

As of yesterday, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. is still short by some $200,000 to fully meet its payroll tomorrow, according to chief financial and administrative officer Alvaro Santos.

He confirmed, however, that the corporation paid on Monday the allotments of its personnel, including two pay periods of health premiums to insurance carriers.

The corporation needs about $800,000 each payroll for about 600 employees on three islands. The cash on hand as of yesterday afternoon was about $600,000, of which $417,000 is the regular monthly allotment from the $5 million seed money appropriated by the Legislature.

Santos said it is “possible but not guaranteed” that payroll will be issued to employees on time.

He said the organization’s cash flow varies month to month. On average, the hospital collects about $600,000 monthly and this increases significantly when reimbursement and claims from Medicare and Medicaid kick in, he added.

Santos hopes the daily cash flow will improve by Friday to enable them to meet payroll.

Saipan Tribune learned that allotments for CHC personnel amount to over $200,000 each month and these include health and life insurance premiums, retirement plan, credit union, and other personal allotments of employees.

Santos believes that the corporation also remitted some partial amounts to the credit union as it is included in the “allotment” item of the financial plan. “It’s not as fast as we want it to be, but we’re catching up [with our obligations].”

Calvo’s Insurance Underwriters Inc. general manager Eli C. Buenaventura yesterday confirmed receipt of two periods’ allotment of its CHC members. The company earlier disclosed that the allotments were behind by four pay periods.

Santos said the corporation will catch up with its vendor delinquencies once funding has been identified and becomes available for CHC. He estimates the amount owed vendors at over $2 million.

As for the housing allowance of hospital staff, which has been delayed for four months now, nothing has been paid so far. “But the CEO [Juan N. Babauta] has placed that item on his priority list once MPLT money becomes available,” Santos assured.

Santos is confident that with the hospital emergency declaration, “new monies” will come in to the corporation.