Troubling financial practices at Guam’s only public hospital, and now, a new audit reveals how the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority is hiring and paying its doctors, and the findings have one lawmaker sounding the alarm.

A scathing audit from the Guam Office of Public Accountability is putting GMH under intense scrutiny. The report, covering Fiscal Years 2020 to 2023, found that GMH paid doctors a total of $105.9 million, but how that money was distributed is raising red flags for Senator Sabrina Salas Matanane, chairperson of the Legislative Committee on Health and Veterans Affairs. The freshman lawmaker issued a press release on Tuesday breaking down some of the concerning numbers.

BREAKDOWN OF GMHA PAYMENTS BETWEEN 2020-2023

- 136 contracted doctors: $78.6 million

- 32 government-employed doctors: $27.3 million

- 18 of them received double-payments: $19.1 million 

Salas Matanane called such payments 'outrageous', saying, "And this is part one of several other audits that the OPA plans on doing. i feel it was just absurd, just looking at an audit like this."

One physician alone was paid over $2.7 million through multiple roles at the hospital. The audit also found serious compliance issues, as the senator said, "As the OPA pointed out a lot of these contracted doctors with documents, they didn't have have the required signatories for example the attorney general, the governor, and BBMR."

Senator Salas Matanane says financial accountability must come first, noting, "I think this is an internal issue for GMH to look at their policies and maybe follow their policies. does it need to be legislated? I'm not 100% convinced, I think it's how they manage their finances and their hiring practices, which I think is important."

While the first audit didn’t cite official questionable costs, more reviews are coming. Salas Mantanane and other lawmakers will be watching closely.

"As we had into budget season and as we work on the hospital's finances, I think we should start; I mean, we all want to give as much money to the hospital but we also want a level of accountability in what we give GMH, because throwing money at a problem is not fixing the problem. so with GMH and their finances, we need to look at common sense," she said.

She acknowledges that there are a lot of good doctors at Guam's only public hospital, saying ,"People should still feel the people that are working there considering the conditions that they're working in, truly believe in the people of Guam but they're just doing the best that they can in the conditions that they're working in."