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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0376.013 2006-2008 Dear Council members, First, I want to say thanks for allowing the health care professionals and patients who are affected by this rezoning request to share additional information that the Council needs to concern carefully. I'm sorry we didn't provide this information earlier in this process. I feel like I should also apologize to some of our neighbors who have files complaints about the medical clinics in the Punahele area. We could have done a betterjob of addressing some of their concerns in the past. The County Council doesn't need me to have tell them there is a crisis in health care access in Hawaii. You can't pick up the paper or speak to a neighbor, without hearing how hard it is to find a primary care doctor. Patient care is suffering because of the lack of orthopedic doctors, general surgeons, internists, OBGYN and women's health specialists. In short, patients are having difficulty seeing the very type of health care providers who practice at the Punahele Professional Building at 83 Pu'uhonu Place. If any more OB doctors stop making deliveries on the Big Island, we'll have to train our kids to deliver babies when they go to law school. "Well, there's a shortage of doctors everywhere in the U.S. ,who cares? What's the big deal?" The answer, of course, is that we live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Patients cannot get in their car and drive to the next town or across the state border to find care elsewhere. If patients can't see their doctor in Hilo, they often don't see anybody. I'm a specialist in the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. I co-wrote cq the breast cancer practice guidelines which were published by the Hawaii ~ Department of Health and founder the Hawaii Breast Society. Our ~ mammography clinic should be screening about 2 to 3 thousand more East Hawaii patients each year than we are now. We can save 2 or 3 more ~ ~ d women annually if these patients have access to our mammography v center. We need to accommodate these women as the only mammography clinic on this side of the Island. I guess one could reasonably ask "are you guys dummies? How come you didn't move to a building with more parking?" Maybe with perfect hindsight, we should have waited to see the new parking lot approved by the County Council, but Hilo Medical Center needed our old clinic space for other purposes and asked us to move. We really didn't think we were being foolish when we moved to the Punahele Professional building. We image and biopsy patients of others doctors ,who run back and forth between their doctor's offices and our clinic. What better place to practice in Hilo, then the outpatient medical complexes where most of the referring doctors work? We help surgeons with breast localization, so we needed to be close both to the Community Surgery Center and the hospital. The rezoning for the additional lot, which was recommended by the County of Hawaii Planning Department and the Planning Commission was expected to increase the number of available parking spots by almost 30~. Since that parking lot has been chained off, we've seen women in their 80's walking several city blocks to reach our clinic. How do these patients feel, when they see an unused place to park a few yards away? There are competing issues here, and we realize that. There is a large belt of 9 separate medical office complexes that sees hundreds of thousands of office visits annually. That has changed the character of the neighborhood for the four residential homes sandwiched between these medical centers and the Hilo Community Correctional Center. This is a matter of balancing what is best for these home owners and the nearly 80,000 residents of East Hawaii. The Punahele Professional Building should have and will do a better job of addressing the concerns that have blocked the use of the parking lot. But let's be fair about things. The decision by the County to turn Punahele Street into a major throughfare in the morning has had far more impact on traffic and the quiet of this neighborhood than the medical clinics. The sirens of ambulances traveling to Hilo Medical Center disturb the peace all day long, surely we shouldn't move or close down the hospital! Previous testimony has been presented that loud disruptive behavior at night, prostitution, property crimes and drug dealing have occurred on the vacant lot. I won't ask for a show of hands, but does any Councilperson really believe that the patients, doctors and nurses are responsible for that criminal behavior. Isn't it likely that the County of Hawaii's decision to site a correctional institution in that neighborhood more of a factor than the practice of medicine in the middle of Hilo. I really appreciate the time that the Council members have given to hear me out. I was asked if it wasn't an option to close the exiting clinics and medical practices down and reopen them somewhere in an undeveloped areas. I can share from my recent experience of serving as Chief of Staff at Hilo Medical Center that closing medical practices down is the easy part. These medical practices are actually small businesses. The hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in abandoning their current leases, building or developing new practice sites and the loss of practice income during the move, would likely bankrupt most doctors at the Punahele Professional building. If the Council wishes the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific and other adjacent medical clinic s, that could potentially impact these four homes, to move as well then the medical health care system in Hilo will be devastated. According to the Federal Food and Drug Agency about almost 10% of the total number of mammography clinics in the U.S. were lost in the last 10 years mostly due to bankruptcy. Mammography is more or less a breakeven business, with a high risk of lawsuits. Our mammography center cannot afford the cost of another move, and if we are forced to close, it will be hard to find other professionals to replace our mammography services. I was also asked if we could develop parking remotely and bus patients and health care providers to the Punahele Professional Building. First, the physicians who run back and forth to the hospital and ER, have to park onsite. Can you imagine Dr. Gerald Lau or Dr. Raymond Lee being bused to their vehicles when they are paged to operate on a patient with a ruptured aorta or appendix? At some places like Disneyland, people do park in remote parking lots and are bused in. We see 10,000 patients annually for mammography alone. I will ask those women if they wish to spend the extra half hour or hour being bused in for mammography, and have then call the County Council with their opinion, but I won't give your home phone numbers. It will be more convincing to hear the opinions of your mothers, wives and daughters this offsite busing plan. With this additional important information to consider, 1 think that there is no reasonable alternative to approving the rezoning of this parking lot. The County Planning Department approved the rezoning this lot because "The County is responsible for general welfare of it's residents and must continue to make every effort to ensure that adequate health services are provided". If the Council approves rezoning, then privacy fences and or green belts will be constructed around the lot, and the lot's access to Punahele Street will be permanently blocked. If the Council members vote against rezoning then the Punahele Professional Building likely will be forced to divert funding needed for better medical equipment into the concrete for a large parking ramp which will tower over Punahele Street. Our fencing currently blocking access to the lot from Punahele Street wil be removed and the control of the lot will revert back to the previous owners. The Planning Department states "the property does have a sewer line and water line that extends form Punahele Street to the rear of the property, which renders the property unbuildable". Therefore, this would forever remain a vacant lot, used for unfenced, unauthorized parking with all of the associated criminal activity that was described to the Council. In short, everybody loses, including the homeowners and patients in East Hawaii. The Council wanted to send a message that developments, even medical projects, need to be attentive to the concerns of the neighborhood. That message had been received. We have offered to meet with Councilman Ikeda and all the neighbors. We've gone door to door to talk story about what we can do to be better neighbors. Please, I beg you, do not punish the women and patients of east Hawaii by banning parking and access to Health care.