THE Guam Memorial Hospital says it plans to comply with Sen. Dennis Rodriguez Jr.’s legislative subpoena asking for executive session transcripts. But GMH also wants the senator to be more specific with his request.
Last week, Rodriguez wrote to GMH Authority interim Administrator Rey Vega, demanding that he comply with his subpoena after accusing him and other GMH officials of “blatantly” seeking to withhold the executive session transcripts he requested.
Rodriguez was particularly dissatisfied with the position GMH took in citing a law that allows a board to seal executive session transcripts for up to six months. The senator said it has been more than six months since GMHA’s Board of Trustees voted on the GMHA-Dr. George Macris settlement.
In that settlement, Dr. Macris agreed to drop all charges against the hospital in exchange for reversing the medical peer review that led to the suspension of his hospital privileges.
“We’re going to comply,” said Atty. Tom Fisher, GMH’s legal counsel.
Fisher said there were some minor redactions requested in the material and he has asked Rodriguez to give GMH some time to comply with the request.
Because sensitive personnel matters may be discussed during an executive session, Fisher said he wanted to ensure matters irrelevant to what the senator is specifically looking for are not made public.
“There are things in there that are not relevant to his particular request. We have to remove those,” Fisher said.
Rodriguez could not be reached for comment as of press time. However, Fisher said he was confident the health committee oversight chair will agree to GMH’s request.
Meanwhile, the reconvening of the April 30 GMH hearing that Rodriguez conducted will begin today at the Legislature at 6 p.m. Among the items on the agenda is GMH’s medical peer review policy.
