[ OUR OPINION ]
REGARD for the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii appears to have been revived as the institution, faced with debt and about to be sold off, has received an infusion of donations to relieve some of its financial problems. The center, which serves to promote and perpetuate Japanese heritage, holds a valuable place in Hawaii's cultural landscape and the support it has drawn from the community reflects that. Saving cultural center
is a worthy effort
THE ISSUE The Japanese Cultural Center faces an uphill battle in raising money to keep going.
The center is not yet out of the woods. The $1.5 million in contributions, including $500,000 from Makiki Japanese Language School, is still short of the $9 million it needs to pay off bank loans, its mortgage, property taxes and vendors. Still, if the center's members can further raise awareness of its mission, they may be able to save the enterprise.
The center's money problems came to light earlier this year when state Sen. Brian Taniguchi put an $8 million bond authorization into the state budget to purchase the Moiliili land on which it sits. The matter caused some embarrassment for supporters of the center, whose officials did not initiate Taniguchi's action.
Governor Cayetano eventually vetoed the item and, in September, the center's directors decided to sell the building. However, members were unhappy with the plan and without a quorum to approve the sale, the deal was put off.
As happens when an institution faces demise, people who had grown apathetic rallied to sustain the center, which is seen as important to educate the community about Japanese immigration to the islands. The center houses a gallery containing historical artifacts, a library, a martial arts dojo, a teahouse and gift shop and commercial office space.
Other cultural establishments have suffered similar financial hardships. Hawaii Plantation Village in Waipahu, which depicts the lifestyle during the early 1900s of the 400,000 immigrants who worked on sugar plantations, lost most of its state funding this summer and was forced to cut staff and hours.
With state revenues tight, cultural groups have had to seek funding elsewhere. It remains to be seen if the Japanese center will gather enough donations to stay afloat. If not, Hawaii will lose another entity that gives its community distinction.
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HAWAII'S 45 nursing homes fared well in a national survey of quality of care, but such comparisons offer little to cheer about as public assistance becomes endangered across the country. Nursing homes using the survey results to gain knowledge about their relative shortcomings may be able to do little about it. Federal funding will need to be increased to avoid a deterioration of care for the poor and elderly. Federal help needed
at nursing homes
THE ISSUE The government has released detailed information comparing quality of care in the nation's nursing homes.
The survey amounts to a tabulation of information nursing homes must supply to the government in order to participate in Medicare. It shows Hawaii's nursing homes scored better than the national average in most of the 10 areas of performance or quality assessed. The comparisons were made in such areas as the percentage of residents with infections, bedsores, pain or symptoms of acute confusion or delirium.
A pilot survey was conducted at nursing homes in six states in April. The publication of the information about all nursing homes in the country may be the government's most extraordinary use of the Internet since the Web's inception. Online users can learn an individual nursing home's score in each category and make comparisons with other nursing homes and with the average of the nation's 17,000 nursing homes. It is located at www.medicare.gov/
Mary Rydell of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said some score differences may result from the nature of particular nursing homes. For example, a relatively high percentage of residents experiencing pain is likely to occur in a home with rehab patients who may not be able to take pain medicine.
Nursing homes can use the survey to determine ways to improve, but only if they can afford to do so. Medicare payments were cut about 10 percent on Oct. 1, the beginning of the fiscal year, and the Bush administration is not supporting legislation to prevent or reverse the cuts. It also has opposed increasing federal contributions to Medicaid.
Medicare pays an average of slightly more than $300 a day for elderly requiring skilled nursing care, who comprise 12 percent of nursing home residents. Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor and disabled, covers 70 percent of nursing home patients but pays an average of $105 a day -- or less than $4.40 an hour -- and many states are cutting back Medicaid payments to help balance their budgets.
"You can't even get a babysitter for $4.50 an hour," says Dr. Charles H. Roadman II, president of the American Health Care Association, comprised of commercial nursing homes.
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