Bull Shedding: Her Way Is On an Expensive Faraway Highway

[Editor’s note: Dr. Vincent Akimoto submitted his opposite editorial (op-ed) to Kandit’s question, “What are the pros and cons of the legislature either allowing the governor to build the new hospital near Eagle’s Field, or forcing her to build it in Tamuning?” Kandit’s editorial will be published Sunday after all op-eds on this question have been published.]

By Vincent Akimoto, MD

Ypao Point or Mangilao? Wherefore art thou, GMH?

What’s in a name? That which we call a hospital by any other name would smell as sweet if it ever should be finally built.

For 6 long years, the people of Guam have endured the tragic-comedy which is the saga of Governor Lou’s errant attempt to rebuild the dilapidated and failing Guam Memorial Hospital.

Ignoring pleas for inafamaolek, the MagaHaga has chaotically intensified conflict within the island’s fragile medical community. In her blind pursuit of building GMH in the middle of nowhere, Governor Lou Leon Guerrero has thrown collaboration, synergy, and harmony out the window and embraced the school of “My way or the Highway”.

While current GMH management struggle to maintain medical and nursing staff at our island’s only public hospital, Gov Lou bullies local healthcare professionals and ignores their pleas for cooperation.

Instead, the Governor deviously plots a sweetheart $9 million hospital management consulting contract to someone that GEDA (Guam Economic Development Agency) loves. The GMH hospital leadership and GEDA board leadership claim they know nothing about it but they welcome the scrutiny. At the same time, GMH officials admit they have not enough money for medicine, nurses, and clean towels. Oh, and they still owe vendors $20 million from last fiscal year.

Now, in defiance of her $5 million GEDA-authorized Matrix report, Gov Lou is spending $10 million of taxpayer money to buy private property in Mangilao to build a hospital on land that has no water/ sewer/ electricity or functional access roads.

And then, in violation of promises made by Senator Tom Fisher, the Governor coldly moved to condemn and confiscate 42 acres of private land to build her hospital complex. Bewildered Mangilao landowners could only yell helplessly in protest while chicken-hearted Republican and Democratic lawmakers sat impotently.

Meanwhile, the people of Southern Guam are waiting impatiently. Gov Lou said she was building GMH in Mangilao so they would have better healthcare. She promised them easier access to necessary doctors and medicine. She implied that the new hospital would actually have competent medical staff, functional infrastructure, and readily available pharmacy and diagnostic services.

Speaking in silent contradictory testimony to Gov Lou’s empty promises is the spectacularly understaffed and underutilized Southern Regional Community Health Center. Beautifully located in Inarajan, the Southern Health Center could today serve as a critical emergency access hospital for the residents of Southern Guam. Under Gov Lou’s leadership, it has remained mainly unused.

Almost disrespectfully, Gov Lou has been quoted as cheerfully saying that she wants GMH to be completed and opened for the people of the South by 2029. Hopefully by then, more than four GovGuam ambulances will be available to give Southern people a ride to Mangilao.

All animus aside, building GMH on GovGuam land in Tamuning avoids further land grabbing and property condemnation in Mangilao. The first choice for a purely hospital-focused GMH rebuild has always been Ypao Point. Much work will need to be done but, in the end, resurrecting GMH at Ypao Point will certainly be Faster. Cheaper. Smarter.

_____
Dr. Vincent Akimoto practices family medicine and is co-owner of American Medical Center.