Nobody ultimately got hurt, fortunately, and for that Hawaii residents can be grateful. But that’s about the only good thing that can be said about the escape of Randall Saito, 59, the patient acquitted of murder by reason of insanity 38 years ago. He walked out of the Hawaii State Hospital in Kaneohe and got all the way to California on Sunday before the public knew he was gone.

It really shouldn’t be celebrated that the governor and the state Health Department director openly admitted the gravity of their errors at a Wednesday news conference.

After all, one of those errors was the abject failure of protocols meant to protect the public, including the duty to notify people about the escape. In the immediate hours after the scandal broke, officials weren’t explaining what had happened.

But at least Gov. David Ige plainly acknowledged that he is “deeply concerned” about the case, underscoring the fact that people “should have been notified much, much sooner.”

There are many questions left to answer, and no shortage of people asking them. Democratic state Sen. Jill Tokuda, who represents the Kaneohe community, was asking some of them at a subsequent conference. Among them: How was Saito able to leave? How did he get access to the cash he had on hand?

Tokuda also rightly took the hospital officials to task for issuing such little information immediately, citing privacy concerns. That reticence doesn’t set well with the public left in the dark about a situation that potentially threatened safety — especially the immediate neighbors who have endured hearing repeatedly of escapes.

“It’s not an excuse for you to allow these things to continue to happen,” she said.

Saito was acquitted in 1981 of a killing two years earlier, based on his insanity defense. He shot and stabbed Sandra Yamashiro, 29, who parked next to him at Ala Moana Center.

Health Director Virginia Pressler said he had been a patient for 38 years, and his treatment status likely has changed over time. The exact circumstances of his escape are still under investigation, she said, but added that Saito was authorized to walk the grounds of the hospital but not to leave the hospital campus unescorted.

There are extradition procedures ongoing to bring Saito back from California to face charges. Attorney General Doug Chin said the state will argue that Saito’s escape — premeditated, carefully planned — was conducted without mental impairment.

Here at home, an unspecified number of hospital personnel have been put on leave without pay, pending the investigation, Ige said. Pressler added that the staff “may have inadvertently or purposefully neglected proper procedures.”

Those procedures — affecting visitors who come to the hospital and the patients who are given leave under certain conditions — are under review. This is essential, because frequent escapes from the hospital signal institutional problems, not merely the lapse of individual employees.

Officials point to immediate strengthening of on-site security, but in addition to staff retraining, this episode highlights the need to complete the new $160 million hospital with enhanced security, as scheduled, by 2021.

And as the case plays out, the public must be kept in the loop with regular informational releases about the improvements being made. Whatever safeguards had been in place at the State Hospital are clearly insufficient.

Tokuda pointed to the feelings of anxiety among Kaneohe residents who frequent the public park, the same location from which Saito caught his cab to catch a plane. These feelings ought to count for something and mandate change.

“He is not the first person to walk away from the State Hospital,” she said. “If things are not changed, he will not be the last.”