Posted on: Thursday, March 13, 2003
ISLAND VOICES
Health center must be built
By Rep. Marcus R. Oshiro
A Democrat representing House District 39 (Wahiawa)
In 1997, I agreed to serve on the board of directors of the Wahiawa Hospital Association, which oversees Wahiawa General Hospital, the only 24-hour primary and emergency care medical facility between 'Ewa and Kahuku.
Because the hospital is my community's largest private employer (450-plus jobs) and provides acute and long-term care for my constituents, I naturally viewed that service as an extension of my legislative duties.
Once seated, I soon learned the perilous fiscal condition of the hospital.
For reasons not uncommon to healthcare today, our hospital has operated in the red for a number of years. Inadequate Medicare, Medicaid and QUEST payments are one reason. We also turn no one away and provide $3 million to $5 million in charitable care each year.
Additionally, it is impractical to reconcile the hospital's 40-year-old structure to today's outpatient services and medical technologies. Thus, healthcare experts advised us to find a niche, partner with others or close the hospital. We chose to develop a sports care medicine niche and incentivize partnerships.
The Pacific Health Center would be an integral component of Hawai'i's promising biomedical, educational and research industries. It would provide a clean and quiet industry and high-paying jobs, reduce traffic into Honolulu, help local businesses, and improve the quality of life and healthcare for thousands of families in Central and North Shore O'ahu.
It would provide far more for our state than either the Kewalo Basin or Ko Olina aquarium tourist-centered projects.
From its inception, the community's voice has driven the Pacific Health Center project. The support from area residents, businesses, trade unions and healthcare providers has been enthusiastic and substantial. Six area neighborhood boards have endorsed the project, and the state Land Use Commission approved the land-use changes from agriculture to urban.
Furthermore, the Central O'ahu Sustainable Communities Plan approved a "medical park," and the city's Department of Planning and Permitting recommended City Council approval of Pacific Health Center's plan review use application.
But time and legal ambiguities have tempered the initial enthusiasm of doctors, nurses, planners, builders, financiers and potential healthcare partners. Now, failure to develop Pacific Health Center would ensure Wahiawa General Hospital's demise, with the accompanying loss of many jobs and $60 million in business activity, and greatly reduce accessibility to affordable healthcare for the communities of Kunia, Mililani, Wahiawa, Waialua, Hale'iwa and the North Shore.
Therefore, because the Pacific Health Center would serve a compelling state interest as both an economic catalyst and necessary community healthcare enterprise, I introduced HB 550 to streamline what has become an overly burdensome, politically charged approval process and expedite its development. Moreover, I, too, strongly support excluding any residential housing and non-healthcare facilities from its application.
With that, my conscience is clear and I entrust the people of my community to condone or condemn my actions. Any failure on my part, as the elected state representative, to do whatever I can to save Wahiawa General Hospital is simply not an option.
