GMH faces soaring accounts receivable

Written by Sabrina Salas Matanane
KUAM.com
Published on Jan. 25, 2013

Guam - A little over one month on the job and the Guam Memorial Hospital's chief financial officer has a soaring accounts receivable to contend with. He presented his evaluation of the hospital's finances to the board last night.

Alan Ulrich said, "The total receivables gross then at the Guam Memorial Hospital is a total of approximately $162 million. Joseph Verga added, ""Isn't that incredible?"

Ulrich, the new chief financial officer, participated in his first official board meeting last night. He was hired a little over one month ago to help new hospital administrator, Verga, resuscitate GMH from its flatlining finances. Ulrich presented board members with an evaluation of the hospital's finances, from $21 million in payables, of which $14 million is owed to vendors, to the whopping $162 million owed from self-pay customers, insurance companies, and, "as of December 31, we had $47 million receivables from the government."

Its soaring receivables that Ulrich and Verga are trying to figure out ways to collect but admit that might be an impossible task. Verga said, "Allen and I are talking, I had a real intriguing idea, we talked about perhaps even selling the receivable at a discount, maybe getting something out of it. We're looking at trying to use that of course we're not going to get it. Even looking back at what GovGuam owes us, and you've heard me say this public we're looking down the road and trying to wipe that slate clean," he said.

Ulrich said, "It's not going to be something that happens quickly. We have issues relative to vendors here which has been publicized and talked about so we have issues to relative to liabilities to vendors and also relative to processes we can do to make sure that the hospital is charging for and collecting for services that it has."

Verga and Ulrich meanwhile are reviewing Senator Dennis Rodriguez, Jr.'s Bill 20, which would provide approximately $8.5 million in annual revenues to GMH funded by a 4% fee assessed on premiums collected by health insurance companies doing business on Guam.