Improvement is Still Needed For The Territory’s Medical Facilities

Among the many operational challenges occurring at the medical facilities in the territory, it appears little progress has been made addressing the operations, infrastructure, and disaster recovery projects, as revealed during Friday’s senate hearing for the members of the Committee on Health, Hospitals and Human Services.

Doug Koch has been serving as the chief executive officer for Juan F. Luis Hospital for the last two weeks. He addressed the waning retention of medical staff and the expansion of medical quarters and equipment.

“Recruitment and retention of healthcare personnel have been routinely, negatively impacted by the competitive short-term contract salaries offered on the mainland,” said Koch. “Coupled with the high cost of the Government Employees Retirement System, cost of living and the availability of affordable housing have all created a perfect storm of great recruiting challenge.”

Senator Alma Francis Heyliger brought to the attention of the members of JFL her concern about sexual harassment complaints. However, both Koch and Acting Chief of Human Resources Director Terry Lynch said they had not received any complaints of sexual harassment.

“Sexual harassment is a very serious accusation,” said Lynch. “If any of your constituents have reached out to you with some concerns, please urge them to make sure that they forward any of those complaints to the HR department.”

Christopher E. Finch is the chairman of the Board of Directors for the Health and Hospitals Facilities Corporation. He mentioned that though retention is declining, there has been a low number of forced separations for the facilities in the territory. Regarding vaccination mandates, at the Schneider Regional Medical Center, 90% of employees are vaccinated, and 84% are at JFL.

“We have, from the very beginning, followed the federal rules of offering medical and religious exemption. Everyone with an exemption has a testing requirement,” he said. “If we had not established our own vaccine mandate in August, by late November, early December, with the CMS requirements, we would’ve had to do one then.”