Queen’s finalizes purchase of HMC

Patients hoping for the return of a major medical center in Ewa will have to wait at least another year, while a closed hospital in Li­liha still has no date for reopening.

Queen’s Health Systems finalized its purchase Friday of the former Hawaii Medical Center-West campus in Ewa and said it plans to reopen the only acute-care hospital in the area in early 2014. The hospital will be renamed the Queen’s Medical Center-West Oahu.

That will come as a relief to West Oahu residents who have had to travel longer distances for emergency care since HMC-West shut its doors due to bankruptcy in December 2011.

"We’re going to be delighted to have something closer to home because if there is an emergency, you don’t have to go all the way to Kapiolani (Medical Center for Women & Children) or Queen’s (Medical Center)," said Jame Schae­del, a West Oahu resident who sits on the Maka­kilo/Kapo­lei/Hono­kai Hale Neighborhood Board. "Those minutes can save lives."

Queen’s bought HMC-West from St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii for $40 million and plans to spend at least $30 million to renovate and equip the hospital, said Art Ushi­jima, Queen’s president, at a news conference. Queen’s will expand and improve emergency, surgical and imaging services. It will hire up to 400 people to staff the hospital, which will have 70 beds, Ushi­jima said.

Meanwhile, the future of St. Francis’ other facility, the aging HMC-East hospital in Li­liha, remains unclear.

Jerry Correa, CEO of St. Francis, said the sale of the Ewa hospital to Queen’s gives St. Francis the needed capital to eventually reopen in Li­liha, but he could not say when that might be.

The Liliha hospital closed in early January, displacing the state’s most vulnerable long-term care patients. Combined with the closure of HMC-West, 1,000 workers were left jobless.

"We are not planning to sell" the Li­liha campus, but instead are looking for operating partners, Correa said, adding that the future of the Li­liha campus is as a post-acute, or long-term care, center. "We are working very hard and trying to move quickly."

St. Francis will open sections of the Li­liha campus as the services become available, he said.

Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, a member of the Liliha/Puu­nui/Alewa/Kamehameha Heights Neighborhood Board, whose father is a physician still operating a private practice on the Li­liha campus, said, "There’s a lot of concern about what’s going to happen, especially for them (the physicians). They’ve invested so much of their careers in that facility that if there were to be some drastic change, it would be very difficult for them to rebuild a practice somewhere else. It would be nice to know what the next steps are. Right now we’re kind of in a holding pattern, and that’s tough for the community."

While Liliha’s closing was difficult, at least nearby residents had other hospitals they could access. The closing of the Ewa hospital had a greater impact on those who live in West Oahu. It also put an immediate strain on Oahu’s emergency medical services as ambulances were diverted, overloading other hospitals.

"All the other hospitals are totally overwhelmed, and ambulances have had to travel much farther," said James Ireland, director of the Hono­lulu Emergency Services Department, adding that West Oahu patients are still showing up at the closed Ewa emergency room and end up having to call 911 for help.

"Last week three people in one day thought the ER was still open, went to the ER very sick and found out it was closed. They had to call the ambulance from an empty hospital."

Over the past year, EMS added more ambulances and staff to West Oahu, but Ireland said that is only a temporary solution. State funding for the additional ambulance in Ewa expires in June.

"The additional resources we put up for EMS has been a patch, but the long-term solution is getting the hospital open in the West," Ireland said.

Ushijima said the Queen’s Medical Center on Punchbowl Street in downtown Hono­lulu has seen a 10 percent increase in emergency patients since the closing of HMC-West.

"The Queen’s Medical Center is looking forward to working together with the West Oahu community to open the campus," he said.

The Franciscan sisters sold the hospitals in January 2007 for $68 million to HMC LLC, then a for-profit joint venture between Hawaii Physician Group LLC, comprising 130 local doctors, and Kansas-based Cardiovascular Hospitals of America. St. Francis provided the bulk of the financing for the sale, $40.2 million.

HMC first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2008. It emerged in August 2010 and became a nonprofit organization before filing its second bankruptcy in June 2011.