State must meet needs of Kahuku Hospital
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A transfusion has been ordered up — and just in time to save the patient.
Kahuku Hospital's board of directors, thankfully, has heard the community drumbeat demanding the preservation of the only emergency medical facility serving the North Shore, a particularly critical need in this more remote district.
The board is holding off on its filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 provisions, which would immediately void the hospital license, Certificate of Need and Critical Access Hospital designation. Those are not authorizations that are easy to resuscitate once allowed to lapse.
Instead, under its proposal, hospital directors would agree to file under Chapter 11 protections, which buys more time for debts to be reorganized and for the state to develop a plan to keep the hospital up and running on a long-term basis.
But in order to make that work, the board needs assurances — which the state should give them. The conditions:
These seem to be reasonable requests, considering that the board has a fiduciary duty to stop the financial hemorrhaging and can't be expected to assume personal liability.
And, of course, the creditors who are owed $3.5 million should expect their bills to be paid on a timely basis.
None of this means that the state can't seek private participation in the final solution. There should be a way for private developers with a stake in community safety to be underwriters of the service as well.
But for the sake of continuity of critical care, the preservation of a hospital operation rises to the level of a state duty. The district's elected leaders have been working toward this end, and their colleagues at the Capitol should join them in the follow-through.
And as it was the grassroots outcry that helped persuade the board to change course, the community should keep the heat turned up throughout the legislative session. Public pressure works.
