The City Council members representing the Ewa region are holding a briefing today with leaders from the medical and emergency service fields to discuss the ongoing community concerns about the lack of emergency care in the area following the closure of Hawaii Medical Center-West in late 2011.
The Queen’s Health Systems acquired the property last December, and said it intends to reopen the facility as the Queen’s Medical Center West Oahu next year, but Council members Kymberly Pine and Ron Menor say the area remains glaringly deficient when it comes to emergency services.
"A lot of residents continue to be concerned, and I think an update is needed," Pine said. "It will be helpful to a lot of residents to know that there is coordination still going on to ensure their medical needs are met."
Said Menor, "The lack of emergency rooms in Ewa remains a major concern for the residents in the communities I represent."
Menor said that at the 10 a.m. meeting, he will ask whether there has been any harm done to West Oahu residents in need of emergency care as a result of needing to travel farther to get to a hospital.
Ewa By Gentry resident Mitchell Tynanes said he worries that the nearest hospitals to his home are Wahiawa General and Pali Momi Medical Center in Aiea.
Tynanes said that when he had an erratic heartbeat while playing basketball at Asing Park six years ago, a friend rushed him to what was then St. Francis Medical Center West. While there his heart stopped, and a defibrillator had to be used to restart it, he said.
"Just to have those few extra seconds of the golden hour are critical," said Tynanes, a member of the Ewa Neighborhood Board.
Pine and Menor said they would question Queen’s officials about the possibility of opening the emergency room before the rest of the hospital.
But Susan Murray, senior vice president and chief operating officer for the West Oahu region of the Queen’s Health Systems, said that’s not going to happen.
"It’s really important for us to open the emergency department when we’re fully ready to care for people that walk through the door, and that means we need to have full diagnostic imaging services, we need to have our MRI up and our CT scans, surgery capability," Murray said. "We really feel that a full-service emergency department needs all of those services up and running at the same time."
At this point Queen’s is projecting a spring 2014 opening.
"As we get a little bit closer, let’s say one or two months from now, we’ll be able to name a date," Murray said.
The physicians office building next to the hospital has remained open and is about 85 percent full, including a first-floor space that Queen’s is renovating for imaging services, she said. While those doctors see patients, they are not equipped to handle emergencies.
West Oahu residents and emergency service providers are also closely monitoring the status of Senate Bill 1254, which allocates money to the state Department of Health to reimburse the city Department of Emergency Services for operating an ambulance out of Ewa Beach for a second year.
The Legislature appropriated money last year to have the service operating at least 16 hours a day in response the HMC-West closing.
The bill, which appropriates $1.5 million, would fund the unit for 24-hour-a-day service.
City Emergency Services Director Mark Rigg said he is confident the bill, which is heading to conference committee, will be approved.
"The department believes it is absolutely necessary to have an ambulance unit in the Ewa-Ewa Beach communities," he said.
