Maui hospital
seeks Oahu help

It struggles to provide in-patient
psychiatric facilities for children

WAILUKU » Unable to re-establish its child psychiatric unit in the last six months, a state-run hospital on Maui is looking at other alternatives for treating children experiencing mental health crises.

Maui Memorial Medical Center is considering setting up a relationship with the drug and alcohol treatment center Aloha House to operate a child psychiatric unit, said hospital Chief Executive Officer Wesley Lo.

Lo said Maui Memorial has also been talking with the Queen's Medical Center and the UH John Burns School of Medicine about having a psychiatric residency program on the Valley Isle.

In the meantime, Lo said, Maui Memorial has hired a physician for the next two months to treat children and adults with emergency psychiatric needs.

The child psychiatric unit at Maui Memorial closed on June 1 after two on-call child psychiatrists left Maui.

Lo said since the closure of the child psychiatric unit at Maui Memorial, Valley Isle children requiring psychiatric crisis care have been sent to the Queen's Medical Center and Kahi Mohala Behavioral Healthcare on Oahu. But he said there have been times recently when there were no beds available at either Oahu hospital.

"There hasn't been a lot but there are a few cases," he said. "This is becoming a statewide issue right now."

Tina Donkervoet, chief of the state's child and adolescent mental health division, said there have been one- or two-day delays in transferring children to psychiatric units on Oahu from Maui Memorial because of the unavailability of beds.

Donkervoet said state health officials have been discussing how to provide psychiatric treatment to the children while they are waiting in Maui Memorial.

According to Queen's, the hospital's child and adolescent unit has been operating at near capacity a few times this year.

Chuck St. Louis, a clinical nursing specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry at Queen's, said the lack of enough beds is rare and a recent phenomenon due to a combination of factors, including an increase of non-acute patients occupying beds.

Lo, who initially planned to reopen the unit in August, said he has continued to have difficulty finding child psychiatrists on Maui willing to be on call for emergencies.

Hospital officials say finding child psychiatrists willing to work on-call hours at the hospital has been difficult because there is a great demand for them nationally.