An audit report released Wednesday by the Office of Public Accountability showed the Guam Memorial Hospital ended fiscal 2023 with a net loss of $40.9 million, widening its negative financial position from $257.5 million in 2022 to negative $298.
4 million. The report’s release comes ahead of Tuesday’s emergency legislative session to take up a supplemental budget bill that Speaker Therese Terlaje said will focus, in large part, on appropriating as much as $20 million to cover a shortfall in GMH’s fiscal 2025 budget. Around this time last year, GMH got a $50 million bailout from GovGuam and additional millions of dollars in allocation from the federal American Rescue Plan funds under the governor’s purview.
The audit also showed that GMH had a $97.9 million operating loss in 2023 due to decreases in net patient revenue by $36.7 million.
Most of it, however, was offset by $32.5 million in transfers from GovGuam and $21.7 million in federal grants.
“It’s just a continuation of the problems they’ve had in the past,” Public Auditor Benjamin Cruz said. The public auditor said the four-page-long executive summary of the audit was indicative of the hospital’s financial woes. “It’s supposed to be only one page but it turned out, the only way we could explain what’s happening up there (is with) a four- or five-page highlight.
There’s just too much to report,” Cruz said. Among the other issues raised in the report was the hospital’s collections. Cruz said G.
