Lawmakers on the Senate Budget, Appropriations and Finance Committee heard from two of the territory’s medical care providers Wednesday.
Dr. Tess Richards, STEEMCC’s executive director, led testimony in support of a $2.7 million funding request. Richards told lawmakers that the medical center has made strides after years of weathering “a quiet storm — trapped in a cycle of mismanagement, limited funding and uncertainty that threatened to erode the very care our community depends on.”
“But we did not falter,” she said. “Through bold choices and unshakable resolve, we rose — steadily and deliberately — out of a long and difficult chapter.”
To right the ship, Richards said STEEMCC reduced its workforce in 2023 from 103 employees to 58 and reduced the number of its directors from nine to four. In 2024, the medical center also furloughed staff and implemented an 8% salary reduction before restoring the salaries and reimbursing employees for the lost wages four months later. Despite progress, Richards said STEEMCC continues to struggle with nearly $3.76 million in “legacy debt.”
Richards said most of what STEEMCC owes is divided between rent and arrears to the Internal Revenue Service and the V.I. Internal Revenue Bureau.
“We are able to make our monthly obligations,” she explained to Sen. Novelle Francis Jr., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. “It’s the old debt — the debt from a couple years ago — that we are not able to bring down. And as that is still sitting there, that’s where the interest and the penalties are coming from.”
Like other medical providers in the territory, STEEMCC has seen a sharp increase in the amount of uncompensated care it provides. Richards testified that the number of self-pay patients increased from 1,662 in 2023 to 2,115 in 2024, and 2,407 uninsured patients have already been seen in 2025.
“If we are unable to meet the community’s primary care needs, patients will inevitably turn to an already overburdened hospital system,” she said. “As primary care providers, it’s our responsibility to keep patients out of the hospital — out of the emergency department — but we can only do that if we are given the resources and funding necessary to deliver that care.”
Testifying in support of a $3 million appropriation later, Frederiksted Health Care chief executive Masserae Sprauve Webster said the funds are needed both to cover the local Medicaid match and to cover uncompensated care. During testimony, Sprauve Webster said FHC had yet to receive $1 million earmarked for the health center from Epstein-related settlement funds. Further, FHC had to underwrite $22,000 worth of electrical repairs at its Ingeborg Nesbitt location, she said. Repeated power outages forced the medical center to run a generator and spend $15,000 on diesel.
“Those were definitely unexpected. It was not something budgeted for, nor is it FHC’s responsibility,” she said. Frederiksted Health Care has a 99-year lease on the building, which is owned by the Virgin Islands government.
Sprauve Webster said FHC treats one out of every four residents of St. Croix, 21% of whom are uninsured.
“And with the present administration … more than likely, those numbers are gonna grow,” she said. “Because our Medicare and Medicaid will be reduced in the coming months.”
St. Croix Source
Local government, Local news
