Kaiser Permanente ending Saturday clinic hours

Kaiser Permanente Hawaii is ending Saturday clinic hours, making it harder for those who work during the week to get care.

The state’s largest health maintenance organization, with 245,000 members and 22 medical facilities, will eliminate Saturday hours at 13 clinics statewide beginning in March. The clinics have been open Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon.

“(Getting an appointment) was lousy before; now it’s compounded. We’ll be squeezed to death,” said Waialua resident Jack Magann, a Kaiser senior plan member. “You make an appointment and it’s two or three months later for basic (services). I don’t know how the attention to patients will be, but it was poor before.”

Kaiser said it will make more primary-care appointments available during the weekdays and expand hours at its After Hours Care clinic at Moanalua Medical Center on Saturdays, opening at 8 a.m. instead of 1 p.m. as it does now. Pharmacy hours at the Honolulu Medical Office, Waipio Medical Office and Moanalua Medical Center will remain the same on Saturday.

“They absolutely need Saturdays,” said Magann, a 73-year-old security officer. “We all work. They are not thinking of the patients’ circumstance. I don’t think they try to connect. They’re operating without compassion to the situation. They’re totally leaving us in the vacuum.”

Kaiser — both a medical provider and health insurer — said some of the clinics were underutilized as more patients move toward other high-tech options, including sending “medical selfies” to their doctors to be diagnosed remotely.

“Cost savings is not the primary driver here,” said Kaiser spokeswoman Laura Lott. “Health care is evolving. It’s about using our resources more efficiently.”

“There’s no significant staffing-level changes” as a result of the Saturday closings, Lott said. Kaiser will “keep everybody in house” in other positions, she said. Kaiser began cutting primary-care services on Saturdays more than a year ago at two Maui facilities, she said.

“We want to promote long-lasting relationships between members and their primary care providers, which we can do by offering more appointments during weekdays,” Lott said. “By seeing their primary care doctors on weekdays, patients can better experience the value of our integrated, everything-under-one-roof model at times when all of our services are available to them.”

Kaiser members also have 24-hour access to care through email, telephone and kp.org, Lott added, and can refill prescriptions, schedule appointments and view test results from their computers or mobile devices.

Last year Gov. David Ige selected Kaiser to assume control of Maui Memorial Medical Center, Kula Hospital and Lanai Community Hospital. Kaiser is continuing to negotiate with the state on the terms of the takeover. Kaiser has said it will keep the Maui County hospital network open to the entire Maui community, not just Kaiser members, and would accept, for the first time, patients with other health plans, including rival Hawaii Medical Service Association.