"The train has left the station. We are proceeding along with developing our West Maui health care facility. We are moving forward," Joseph Pluta of the West Maui Improvement Association, whose volunteers have worked on creating a West Maui medical center for eight years, said to The Maui News.

"It's the biggest thing that's happened in West Maui in 30 years."

Brian Hoyle, a hospital builder and banker with ties to Maui, signed on to the project officially on Friday. He explained his plan for the privately funded hospital to the Maui County Health Care Task Force meeting at the Lahaina Senior Center on yesterday afternoon.

The campus-style facility would be built on 14.5 acres donated by the Ka'anapali Development Corp. The site is near the Lahaina Civic Center.

As proposed by Pluta's group it would include a 25-bed critical-access hospital, emergency care, two operating rooms, medical offices, a clinic, 40-bed nursing home, 39 units for assisted living and 40 housing units for staff.

"We'll build it and they will come, I hope," Hoyle said.

The site will need county approvals for zoning and construction permits. But County Council Member Jo Anne Johnson, who's sponsored a bill for the zoning, said she is confident the measure would pass.

A more critical review will be for a state certificate of need. The West Maui Acute Emergency Care Medical Center will need to apply to the State Health Planning and Development Agency, which last year denied a certificate of need for a proposed South Maui medical center.

In denying the Kihei CON, SHPDA Administrator Dr. David Sakamoto said additional hospital beds are needed on Maui, but the proposed Kihei center would duplicate services and undermine the community's health care system.

Hoyle said that unlike the proposed Kihei hospital, the West Maui hospital would not directly compete with Maui Memorial Medical Center.

Instead, it would immediately save Maui Memorial $14 million a year by opening up beds for long-term care patients who now take up beds in Maui Memorial, Hoyle said. All the other assisted-living and nursing homes on Maui are full, he said.

Task force Chairwoman Rita Barreras expressed concern that the assisted-living portion would compete with plans for a similar facility planned for Lahaina.

The West Maui Improvement Association is in the process of developing a cost-sharing agreement with Maui Memorial, Pluta said. The two medical facilities would work together and not compete for patients, he insisted.

"You can play off of each other's strengths," Hoyle said. "We're not replacing Maui hospital by any stretch. We are complementing them."

In a separate presentation to the task force, Susan Forbes of the Hawaiian Health Information Group Corp. said that 40 out of 100 patients on Maui are put on waiting lists for long-term care hospital beds. They also have an aging population and more retirees on the way.

"Yes, we need more beds," Forbes said.

Not everyone supported the West Maui plan. Stacey Haysek of Lahaina asked the task force not to include West Maui hospital in its integrated plan. She said past investors have come in before, made promises and failed.

The combination of SHPDA approval and requirements for construction of a new hospital access road and traffic signals on Honoapiilani Highway would take up to 20 years to complete, Haysek said.

Hoyle said his Southwest Health Group has built 60 hospitals and dozens more nursing and assisted-living facilities across the country. He is also chairman of MetroPacific Bank in Irving, Calif.

This project would be funded by him as well as a group of private investors, he said. They will work with the area's resorts and would be very profitable with private-pay customers, he said.

"It will probably be break even to start with," Hoyle said. "But we expect to eventually be more profitable."

The needs are clear, he explained to the task force set up by a legislative mandate to prepare a recommendation to the Legislature in January. There are 50,000 people on West Maui every day. Maui Memorial is 25 miles away and heavy traffic on the Honoapiilani Highway can cause an ambulance run to take up to 66 minutes to get to Wailuku

Hoyle also said that the West Maui center would specialize in the medical needs of the community, dealing with medical cases such as staph infections and providing cardiac care.

Cardiologist Dr. Howard Barbarosh said he wasn't sure whether the West Maui hospital would be successful, but said that the inevitable competition is good. He also pushed for Maui Memorial to become a full-service hospital.

"The people of Maui deserve more than what they've been given," Barbarosh said.

Another hospital will also stimulate the local economy, he said.

"You can't sell a $5 million condominium to someone and not have a hospital," Hoyle said.