Posted on: Monday, June 6, 2005

Maui hospital hoping to reopen youth unit

By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Maui County Bureau

WAILUKU, Maui — A year after Maui Memorial Medical Center shut down its adolescent mental health ward, the unit remains closed despite the hospital's efforts to find the staffing necessary to reopen it.

But hospital officials say they are getting closer to hiring a medical director for psychiatric services, the first step in reopening the only Neighbor Island psychiatric care unit for youth, serving Maui and Hawai'i counties.

Wesley Lo, hospital CEO, said he's not exactly sure what the youth ward will look like, but he's confident the doors will finally open again in the fall.

The Molokini II ward was closed June 1, 2004, following the unexpected departure of the unit's two staff psychiatrists. One moved to the Mainland, while the other didn't want to be on-call virtually all of the time.

At the time, hospital officials promised to work to reopen the ward despite a shortage of child psychologists on Maui. They came close to hiring a psychiatric services medical director last summer, but that fell through.

Lo said yesterday he's hoping to hire another medical director within a couple of weeks and to come up with a formal plan to relaunch the unit within four to six weeks.

The new director will oversee both the adult and adolescent mental health wards and help with emergency calls. The tentative plan, Lo said, is for the hospital to hire physicians — the director and another person — as employees rather than to rely on doctors in the community to be available on call.

Lo said the hospital is also working with the Department of Health, The Queen's Medical Center, University of Hawai'i John A. Burns School of Medicine and other hospitals to coordinate adolescent psychiatry services, in light of a statewide shortage of child psychiatrists.

"We're working on how Maui can assist and fit into the solution," he said.

When the Molokini II ward closed last year, community members expressed concern it would never reopen.

Colleen Wallace of the Mental Health Association of Maui said she remains fearful because, among other things, the youth unit is being used as overflow space for the adult unit.

In addition, a resolution in this year's Legislature asking that the state Health Department assist in reopening the Maui unit was rewritten to call for a yearlong study, she said.

Meanwhile, there were troubled youngsters who didn't get the help they needed last year, she said, and the problem will continue as long as the youth unit is closed.

"It's worse than unfortunate," Wallace said. "We need the youth unit back."

In 2002 and 2003, Molokini II had 244 admissions.

Reach Timothy Hurley at thurley@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 244-4880.