How Hawaii’s Rural and Community Hospitals (Barely) Stay Afloat

Hawaii Business Magazine | Nov. 2017 | by Noelle Fujii

State Sen. Josh Green works the weekend shift at Kohala Hospital’s emergency room, and it’s normally quiet. That could change in seconds. A car crash. A heart attack. A man enters the emergency room with a saw in his arm. A woman comes in with a shattered and dislocated ankle. If Green hadn’t been there to put the woman’s ankle back in place, the circulation to her foot would have been cut off, and amputation would have been necessary. “My service saved her foot,” he says, “but I couldn’t do the surgery. Two hours later, I got her to North Hawaii Community Hospital where they put a bigger splint on and they did the operation the next morning. Six weeks later, she’s more or less fine. Three months later, she’ll forget altogether that she ever had it. But she would have lost her foot without the Critical Access Hospital. And I’ve seen that story over and over again.” Read full article