A critical oversight hearing on the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority held Wednesday put the spotlight on the issues that plague Guam's only public hospital. 

Lawmakers examined a recent audit by the Office of Public Accountability which raised concerns over physician hiring practices, contracts, and lack of written guidelines. 

“That's all we're saying. Yes we may have errors and computation errors, this one was stating, are you in compliance? With something that's in writing,” said Public Auditor Benjamin Cruz.

Cruz referred to part one of the GMHA audit on physicians pay. 

“There is no error in the fact that we say that the criteria is the law and the policy,” said Cruz. 

“You have to look at these policies in context..this is part of the struggle with the OPA the entire time, including lack of visits to our medical staff. There were public statements made by the Public Auditor before this even began about what he thought he would find.  Never had a neutral fair shake at this,” said Jordan Pauluhn, Legal counsel for GMHA. 

Cruz pointed out that almost every GMHA official admitted  they are drafting something but it has not been adopted.

“They have not once addressed the fact that there are policies that say all contracts and nowhere does it say except for physicians. Where is that? Even if we sat with anyone in the medical office, where is the policy? Something has to be in writing, it can't just be 'this is the way we are doing it right now.’” said Cruz. 

Although it is clear that the audit highlights the hospital's inadequate oversight of procurement and physician compensation, Chief Financial Officer Yuka Hechanova has thoughts of the audit overall.

“I expected a lot more from the audit, I wanted to read it and to be clear and tell us what we need to do constructively. to improve,” said Hechanova. 

Instead, Hechanova said the audit was all over the place and very confusing.

“The bottom line at the end of the day you want your recommendations to be implemented- they should be addressing the root cause, and tell us how we should fix it and get the buy-in from the auditees,” Hechanova added. 

Health Committee Chair, Senator Sabrina Salas Matanane concluded the hearing by saying, “While I am committed  to working with you to find solutions, I expect GMH to take proactive and decisive steps to improve its operations.”