A community health center on Hawaii island is moving forward on an ambitious $15 million clinic and teaching center aimed at increasing medical services for rural, low-income and senior residents and training more health professionals to serve the community, which has been plagued by doctor shortages.

The planned Hamakua-Kohala Health Teaching Center, being developed on a 5.5-acre site of the former Kohala Club Hotel, is expected to include primary care, behavioral health, dentistry and specialist services, as well as an in-house pharmacy.

The clinic also will serve as a teaching and educational facility for doctors, nurses, medical assistants, dentists and pharmacists, including offering residency opportunities for medical residents, which in rural settings is rare, according to the health care center.

“Health care resources in North Hawaii have been stretched thin for too long, and the new center will help provide greater access to care for people across the entire region,” said Irene Carpenter, CEO of Hamakua-Kohala Health, which is overseeing the project.

“In addition, we greatly look forward to training the next generation of medical providers, dentists and pharmacists from this very community as we ‘grow our own’ who understand the special needs of North Hawaii,” she said.

Hamakua-Kohala Health is a federally qualified health center, which means it is among Hawaii’s safety net clinics that provide outpatient services in medically undeserved areas regardless of patients’ type of health insurance or ability to pay.

The health center has four locations: Kohala, Waimea, Honokaa and Laupahoehoe. The new clinic will replace the Kohala clinic in Kapaau.

The health center purchased the site for about $900,000, said Carpenter, and is still raising funds for the project.

“The faster we secure the funding, the faster the building will be built,” she said. “We are raising money as fast as we can. We are getting local donors who are stepping up to the plate.”

Carpenter said the health center also hopes to obtain federal and state grants.

Recently, WhiteSpace Architects, which has an office in Waimea, was selected to design the new 24,000- square-foot center, which could include three buildings: including the clinic, student housing and a research center. The hope is to break ground in mid-2024 and begin accepting patients in 2025.

The health center currently serves about 10,000 patients. About one-third are on Medicaid, the government health insurance program primarily for the low-income, and another 24% of patients are on Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors, according to a grant application the health center filed with the state in 2022.

Carpenter said that none of the private-practice physicians in the largely rural area accept Medicare and Medicaid patients, making the new clinic all the more critical.