New hospital is essential

As stated many times in this space, The Maui News supports the construction of a new, state-of-the-art hospital in Central Maui under the auspices of Maui Memorial Medical Center. The current Maui Memorial should be converted into a long-term nursing facility.

Monday’s editorial may have led readers to think otherwise. Although converting Maui Memorial into a nursing facility – there are 40 such patients on any given day in the hospital – may be “implausible,” it is not impossible, and would be, in fact, a valuable adjunct to the island’s health care facilities.

Maui Memorial has 197 beds and could accommodate even more long-term-care patients by remodeling areas now being used for an emergency room, surgeries and other technical facilities.

With a real-life population of 180,000 – residents and visitors – Maui needs more acute-care facilities, particularly on the west side. As proposed, the Maui Improvement Foundation is planning a $70 million facility that amounts to a small hospital. Good.

In addition to that facility and improved emergency care units in more remote areas of the county, there is a need for a new, centrally located, up-to-date full-service hospital. The intersection of Puunene Avenue and Kuihelani Highway would be an excellent location with plenty of acreage for a 350-bed community hospital and heliport that would allow instant air support across the county.

Maui’s population is getting larger and older. The need for nursing facilities will only grow in time. It would take time and money to convert Maui Memorial to such a facility, but it would be time and money better spent than trying to add beds to a hospital originally constructed by the county for a population of less than 50,000.

The Maui Health Care Initiative Task Force would do well to consider using Maui Memorial as a nursing facility and recommend the construction – using public and private funding – of a new hospital designed to meet the island’s needs in the future. It could also recommend Maui County be allowed to build the sort of facilities it wants by exempting it from the state’s control.