State Hospital plans new 150-bed facility

An updated master plan for the Hawaii State Hospital includes development of a new 150-bed long-term care facility on the site of the Bishop Building located near the front of the Kaneohe campus, a state official said.

Plans are to have a private contractor construct and operate the long-term care facility, but discussions are pending on whether the demolition of the Bishop Building would be covered by the contractor, Janice Okubo, a spokeswomen for the state Department of Health, said Thursday.

"The vision is for a 150-bed facility that would provide long-term care for both people in the community as well as patients in the hospital," Okubo said.

The updated master plan was scheduled to be unveiled Thursday at the Kaneohe Neighborhood Board meeting.

The master plan originally developed in 2005 already included the demolition of the Goddard Building toward the back of the campus, with plans for a new 144-bed facility.

"We do have plans to demolish that building and construct a new building in place of it," Okubo said. "We do have funds to demolish, but we probably, in the future, will be seeking funding to design a new building."

She said the Goddard Building, which is not in use, is one of the oldest on the campus.

"The need for building a facility for the Goddard Building is because of our increasing patient census at Hawaii State Hospital," she said. "The census — the population — has been growing.

"We’ve been getting more and more court-ordered patients and we need to build capacity at the hospital."

There are currently 209 patients at the State Hospital who are forensically mentally ill, and the licensed limit is 202, according to Mark Fridovitch of the state Adult Mental Health Division. There are 42 patients in overflow beds at Kahi Mohala, which the state contracts to house patients.

Star-Advertiser reporter Allison Schaefers contributed to this report.