Hospital administration is a lot about numbers, and Susan Murray, chief operating officer of the soon-to-open Queen’s Medical Center-West Oahu, has a lot of them right at her fingertips.
Murray, who also wears the hat of Queens’ senior vice president of the West Oahu region, fully expects her new bailiwick is where much of the action will be.
"By 2040, 50 percent of Oahu’s population will live out here," she said. "So it’s going to deserve a bigger breadth of services, and I think that’s our intention as we move forward."
Queen’s Health Systems bought what was known as Hawaii Medical Center-West (and, before that, St. Francis-West) almost 18 months ago, and in the intervening time has invested a total of $100 million in the purchase and rehabilitation of the 17-acre campus.
The closure was felt most acutely in the emergency room services for Oahu’s fastest-growing community, but that void will be filled when the new ER, and the rest of the hospital, opens to the public at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
Murray is married to a retired cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Kevin Murray, and they have three adult daughters and five grandchildren.
She has some family history in the community herself. Born in San Diego, she moved here as a child when her father was stationed in the Navy; he started his second career in petroleum engineering as the first president of Hawaiian Independent Refinery Inc., at Campbell Industrial Park.
The graduate of Punahou School and the University of Hawaii-Manoa earned her master’s degree in health services management from the University of Dallas and moved back to Honolulu after a career in hospital management on the mainland.
Formerly hospital administrator at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, she said she never contemplated embarking in the medical practice side herself.
"I admire those who do," she said. "It’s the truth. I always felt, ‘If I had the nerve …’ My oldest daughter’s a nurse. I always think, ‘I don’t know how she does it.’ My husband’s a physician: open-heart surgery. How in the world?"
QUESTION: What was this rehab like? Was the interior completely gutted?
ANSWER: Most of the areas were completely gutted. On this (fifth) floor, some is as is, and that’s where we have biomed or our facilities repairing beds and things like that, so that was left alone.
But originally we gutted the first floor. You could walk in the front door and see all the way out to the loading dock.
We tripled the size of the emergency department, and we had to take some services that were on the first floor — like the cafeteria or dining room, and central supply — and place them other places. So the dining room we moved up to the fifth floor. …
Central sterile, central supply we moved to the second floor. We purchased the second floor of the conjoined building, CSC Building. Clinical Services Center Building … is attached; it’s very handy because it’s in proximity to the operating rooms and procedure rooms, which are on the second floor. To have central sterile and central supply close where you need the supplies makes more sense.
So we’ve expanded the footprint somewhat, with the entire second floor and half of the fifth floor, where the dining room is.
Q: By expanding the footprint, you’re meaning … ?
A: Meaning it’s not strictly in the hospital building but it’s now become part of the hospital.
Q: Was the CSC Building separated at some point before?
A: It was always conjoined, but it was under different ownership.
Q: What distinguishes Queen’s West from the old HMC West in terms of services? Starting in the emergency room?
A: It’s gone from 10 bays formerly to 23 bays currently. And the physician group is the same group that is the physician group at our Punchbowl facility. So that level of emergency department expertise are the physicians who are going to be running this emergency department.
Q: Some of the personnel are moving here?
A: Yes.
Q: The expansion to 23 bays, was this based on findings about the operation?
A: Well, the population rose, and the fact that it was so undersized before. We heard tales of people waiting in hallways on gurneys and (being) really difficult to care for because it was difficult to work around, and have privacy for the patients.
So when you look at the growth that this area’s having, even since it’s closed in the past two years, it just creates more need.
Q: But it was undersized from the start?
A: It was undersized from the start. EMS and those that worked here before, we certainly went to them to find out what their thoughts were and how they thought we could improve services.
Q: Up until this point, where has the traffic gone, mainly?
A: Pali Momi, Kaiser, Wahiawa. And, of course, Waianae Comp (Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center) does a great service as well.
Q: But there’s plenty of demand for all of these operations?
A: Yes. I like to say we come as a collaborator and a partner, not as a competitor. There’s enough demand from this population to have all of us here to take care of them.
Q: Is the population going to outgrow the current infrastructure?
A: We have 17 acres. This is our beginning.
Q: It can expand up and out?
A: Yes, up and out, and another physician office building. We know we’re going to need a parking structure, because the parking lot is full and we haven’t even opened yet.
Again, as the demand grows, we’ll grow with it.
Q: What’s different about your post at Kaiser with the job you have here?
A: The difference is, what makes it more exciting, is it’s new. It’s a new management team and new staff coming together. We get to all have our first day on May 20. That rarely if ever happens. People come at staggered times.
So the team camaraderie that we’re developing very intentionally is quite wonderful.
Q: Are the team members long-term Queen’s employees?
A: About a third are Queen’s people, and some within that group were formerly from HMC or St. Francis. So when those entities closed they went to other health care providers, and now they have a full-circle moment.
But they would be the first to tell you, this is a new hospital. It doesn’t look anything like it did.
Q: What other services were seen as naturally part of Phase 1 development?
A: It all goes back to our board, and (Queen’s Health Systems CEO) Art Ushijima, and looking at our mission. When you look at taking care of Native Hawaiians and all the people of Hawaii, one of the things we did was, what are the services they had before, what were the gaps in services, what currently exists in the community — whether Waianae Comp, or Wahiawa or Pali Momi? Then, how can we enhance that?
So we’re looking at bringing our diabetes program that we have at the main campus out here, because that is certainly a problem among Native Hawaiians — and, really, it’s a problem, right? — with obesity, et cetera.
Instead of the tertiary, quaternary and statewide (care) viewpoint that (Queen’s) Punchbowl has, we have the vista of looking at West Oahu and what are those needs. And they have great need for education, for screening. There are a lot of people living out here who don’t routinely get their mammograms when they’re appropriate, or colonoscopies, as an example, to make sure they’re healthy or, if there is cancer, that it’s at the earliest stage possible.
So there’s a lot we can do to help keep this community healthy, and then to take care of them when they’re not.
Q: How does this translate into hospital functions?
A: So, we’re bringing on two gastroenterologists, and we’ve built out two procedure rooms so they can do routine colonoscopy screenings for this population. We have a tomography mammogram, which is the highest level, with the highest resolution so you can see things much better, and a DEXA (bone density) scan — again, to encourage women to come in, in their neighborhood, get their screenings, to make sure they’re healthy or at least catch things at the very earliest stage.
We’re also bringing on additional acute-care surgeons — we have some, but we need more — and cardiology. There are a lot of heart issues in general, but certainly on the west side. So we’ll have two cardiologists that will be helping us take care of this population.
Q: Does this mean HMC was a little more basic?
A: I wish I were more of an expert on what those services are, and it was probably at various levels of service over their tenure. Because as you get into financial issues, you can’t afford to do as much as you once did. …
Q: So it’s just to address an underserved need, then?
A: Yes.
Q: Are there more acute-care beds here now?
A: It’s the same number. They built out 80 beds. It’s the same 80 beds that we’re putting into service: 10 ICU beds, 30 medical surgical beds and then 40 telemetry or monitor beds.
Q: So that’s covered by the hospital’s "certificate of need" state permit?
A: Yes, up to 134 beds are in the certificate of need. So we could build out the fifth floor without going back for another certificate of need.
Q: There’s room on the fifth floor?
A: This is the fifth floor. So we’d just have to move our pencil boxes. (Laughs.)
Q: Anything in particular seen as bringing in revenue?
A: Well, we’ll have a full outpatient surgery department, and we’ll begin to look at orthopedics and joints, so people who need knee replacement or shoulder sports injuries, that sort of thing.
We have three orthopedic surgeons right now that are interested, one of whom, Jason Kaneshige, grew up in Waipahu.
Another one of them, Alex Garber, lives out here.
So they have a real commitment to the neighborhood and building their practice here and caring for these people.
