Plans call for building the 20-foot-high, 60-by-60-foot helipad on the Wailuku side of the hospital, to the rear of the maintenance offices and greenhouse and about 100 feet away from Maui Memorial's emergency room, which is undergoing renovation.

"This is a very high priority," Maui Memorial Chief Executive Officer Wesley Lo said last week as he discussed the helipad plans along with Facilities Project Manager Pat Miyahira.

The hospital has encumbered approximately $300,000 of a $750,000 legislative appropriation on a site-selection study and preliminary designs for a helipad that will be built on a steel foundation.

Miyahira said he and the hospital's consultants believe that more money will have to be appropriated to cover the helipad construction. Hospital officials said they won't know how much construction costs will be until the design of the helipad is completed.

A building contract is scheduled for bidding beginning in April, with the target of selecting a contractor by June 30. Construction time is estimated to take six to eight months.

Hospital officials want the design of the helipad facility to include offices and/or room to house an emergency helicopter crew.

Patients brought to the hospital via the helipad will be placed on a "golf cart" – similar to what fans of professional football have seen used to haul injured players off the field – for transport into the facility.

Currently, emergency helicopter services are contracted to American Medical Response, the same company providing ground ambulance service in Maui County.

The helicopter service is activated for emergency interfacility transports and emergency scene traumas. Two emergency medical technicians and one mobile intensive care technician are stationed in Kula and are picked up by a helicopter from Kahului Airport to respond to calls for help or transport.

Once a patient is picked up and secured in the helicopter, it flies with the medical crew back to either the airport, or one of four separate sites at the War Memorial Complex in Wailuku. From one of those locations, patients are taken by ambulance to Maui Memorial.

Since the service began on Sept. 14, 2004, American Medical Response has had 231 transports as of Wednesday, according to Maui County AMR Operations Manager Curt Morimoto. The number reflects both interfacility transports and crew responses to trauma scenes.

American Medical Response officials said they were pleased to hear that plans on a new helipad were moving forward.

"That's good news that this is being addressed," said Speedy Bailey, the general manager for American Medical Response in Hawaii. Bailey referred questions about how much his company is paid to provide the emergency helicopter services for Maui County to officials in the state Department of Health's Emergency Medical Services Branch. They could not be reached for comment.

Maui County spokeswoman Mahina Martin said the county's portion of the emergency helicopter services contract in this year's fiscal budget calls for paying $672,215. The state and county formerly split the costs of the service, but the state has begun picking up a larger portion of the tab this year to pay for a second helicopter.

Meanwhile, Maui County also continues to receive medical transports via a fixed-wing air ambulance.

In selecting a site, Maui Memorial officials considered a variety of factors, including helicopter flight patterns, ground safety and proximity to the emergency room. The helipad structure is not expected to reduce the hospital's already limited inventory of parking spaces.