State health officials say that a staffing shortage at the Hawaii State Hospital is preventing the opening of the last of six units at its new 144-bed psychiatric facility, which was completed last year, leaving 16% of beds empty.

The staffing problem is the latest snag for the $160 million facility in Kaneohe, which was built to provide better security and ease overcrowding. In prior months, health officials said delays in completing new policies and procedures and design flaws discovered after the building was turned over to the Department of Health in April 2021 had delayed the transfer of patients. By the beginning of this year, the DOH had hoped to have all the units full by May, when it planned to transfer the patients with the highest security needs into two units on the first floor.

The DOH would not say which unit remains unoccupied or whether it is for patients requiring enhanced security.

“As the new patient facility is a secure forensic facility, we can’t disclose information that may compromise patient and staff safety, which includes the location and security level of that last unit,” DOH spokesperson Kaitlin Arita-Chang said by email.

Arita-Chang said that the State Hospital is trying to reduce the patient population, which currently stands at 270, to free up staff for the remaining unit. Patients not being housed in the new facility reside in other buildings on the campus.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the hospital plans to reduce its numbers. Patients are ordered there by the courts and the state is mandated to accept them. State health officials didn’t respond to multiple interview requests for this report or emails seeking clarification.

Hawaii island resident Lynne Farr said she’s worried the State Hospital might not be housing its most violent patients in the new building. Her husband, Shingo Honda, an acclaimed artist, was murdered in 2019 and the perpetrator, Michael Cecil Lee, was sent to the hospital after being acquitted by reason of insanity. Lee admitted to kicking and hitting Honda, 75, until he stopped breathing, according to news reports. Farr said her husband was killed after bringing Lee coffee and an umbrella during a heavy downpour.

Farr said that she had inquired as to whether Lee had been relocated to the new building, but was told that patient privacy laws prevented the state from disclosing that information.

“The new facility is much improved for security. I would like to know what security he is in,” said Farr. “There are other murderers in there that are just as crazy as he is.”

The new facility was built in large part to improve safety. There had been hundreds of incidents of patients assaulting staff or other patients over the years. A 2014 state Senate report warned that the ongoing assaults could eventually result in a death if safety problems weren’t addressed.

The new building has modern security features and includes hundreds of digital cameras, clear lines of sight, elevators with separate compartments for staff and patients as well as rooms where unstable patients can be constrained or confined to a padded space to prevent self-injury. There are also single rooms for patients with high-risk behavioral problems.

The DOH didn’t respond to a question about how many additional staff are needed to open the last unit.

Arita-Chang said that in other areas of the campus, patient units are paired so that extra staff is available in the event of an emergency.

“Because all units in the State Hospital are paired, we cannot separate one unit from another without hiring backup staff,” she said by email. “The state is experiencing well-documented staffing shortages in all healthcare facilities, so it would not be a good use of staff resources to separate units. There are approximately 120 patients in the New Patient Facility, and we will fill the final 24 beds in a manner that prioritizes staff and patient safety.”