HANA - A blessing and dedication ceremony will be held Saturday morning in Hana for the nation's first communal home dialysis facility.
Gov. Linda Lingle and Mayor Charmaine Tavares are scheduled to attend the event at 11:30 a.m. at a former physician's residence at 4351 Hana Highway.
What they'll see is a 1930s-vintage, plantation-style residence repainted and refurbished with the help of students from teacher Rick Rutiz's Hana High School building program.
"They did a beautiful job," said Madge Schaefer, project manager for the home's renovation and chairwoman of the Governor's Neighbor Island Community Advisory Council.
The home dialysis facility has four dialysis machines, now serving two patients who receive treatment three times a week. But more Hana patients are expected in the future, Schaefer said.
Now, instead of driving a grueling four- to five-hour round trip from Hana to Wailuku, Hana patients can get their treatment at a facility that's only a five-minute drive from home, she said. The patients are much happier and feel better to have their dialysis treatment so close to home.
"They love the house," she said. "We have to shush them out of the house" when treatments are done.
Aside from fresh paint, the facility has three works by a Hana artist, who paints East Maui landscapes, and donated or discounted furniture, she said.
To turn the former residence into a dialysis treatment facility, new water and electrical systems were needed, along with a backup generator that kicks in automatically if a local outage shuts off power, Schaefer said.
The work has been paid for through a $48,000 grant from Maui County.
To stretch the grant funds as far as possible, "we got everything that we could get donated or discounted or whatever," Schaefer said.
The nonprofit Hui Laulima O Hana, which led efforts to establish the dialysis treatment facility in Hana, has a 20-year lease on the property from Maui County, which manages the state-owned land. The hui pays $1 a year for use of the property.
Last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved the communal dialysis facility, the first of its kind in the nation.
Schaefer said Medicare is watching the project's progress carefully.
If it proves successful, "it will be a model for rural areas across the country," she said.
She credited Hana resident Lehua Cosma for her persistence in making dialysis treatment in the remote East Maui community a reality. Cosma's mother, Cecilia Park, is among the patients benefitting from the new treatment facility.
The facility began making dialysis treatments available March 25, Schaefer said.
People with impaired kidneys need regular dialysis treatment to filter out impurities in their blood.
* Brian Perry can be reached at citydesk@mauinews.com.
