Now Serving Today’s Population
Today, QMC still considers care for native Hawaiians central to its mission. And that commitment to its heritage courses through the veins of the organization.
Its efforts include research into cardiac disparities in native Hawaiian communities and prevention and education outreach about diabetes and other prevalent conditions. The QMC also operates The Queen Emma Clinics, which serve many native Hawaiian patients. In addition, it is a sister company to Molokai General Hospital, which fulfills a vital role in providing healthcare services to the close-knit community of the island of Molokai, whose residents are predominantly native Hawaiian.
QMC is the largest private hospital in Hawaii and all of the Pacific Islands, with 505 acute care beds and 28 sub-acute beds, more than 3,000 employees, and more than 1,200 physicians on staff. Its oncology program includes TomoTherapy, and construction of a new Cancer Center will soon be underway. The Queen’s Neuroscience Institute is the only Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)-certified stroke center in Hawaii. In addition, QMC serves as a Level II Trauma Center, providing care to the vast majority of trauma patients on Oahu, as well as more serious trauma patients flown in by medical air transport from the neighbor islands throughout the state. Its latest equipment addition, the da Vinci (robotic) Surgical System, has the potential to improve the outcomes of patients undergoing both prostate and bariatric surgery.
The Queen’s Hospitalists
QMC also has an established hospitalist program. Starting in 1998 with three “in-house physicians,” as they were called before the program was formally created in 2001, hospitalists provide critical continuity-oriented inpatient services—true to the spirit of the kokua that Queen’s continues to hold dear. The program has grown to include 15 full-time and six half-time nocturnists and expects to continue adding positions at a rate of two to three per year.
The custom of caring for native Hawaiians and all of the people of Hawaii is rooted in royalty. Despite the arrival of statehood, marked by the state capitol, which today sits just across the sprawling “Great Lawn” of the medical center’s campus, Queen’s physicians and administrators say—unwaveringly and earnestly—that there remains a sense of duty to Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV and to the royal legacy they left.
Healthcare today may have a different, high-tech face, but members of the Queen’s ohana (family) insist that that only means they have an even greater obligation to carry out their founders’ dream for health in the islands—for native Hawaiians, other residents, and visitors alike. And they continue to do so in their founders’ names. TH
Pollard is the manager of public affairs for Queen’s Health Systems.