Hawaii residents should take heart at the news that both the Hawaii Medical Center’s shuttered hospitals, in Ewa and Liliha, have attracted serious interest from purchasers in the private sector.

Lawmakers have responsibly stepped up to the plate to enhance emergency services and have authorized the acquisition of the Liliha property as an elder-care facility in the state’s hospital system, should the need arise and funds become available.

But the best outcome for the taxpayers would be the private ownership and management of both hospitals.

The state’s role in all of this should be figuring out a way to streamline the regulatory process that, at this point, will delay the reopening of the facilities for 18 to 24 months after a deal is closed.

Last week the parent company of The Queen’s Medical Center announced its intent to explore the feasibility of reopening the former HMC-West hospital, and began its due-diligence investigation of the assets. The letter of intent was signed between Queen’s Health Systems and St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii, original operators of the HMC hospitals who recovered it after HMC went through bankruptcy.

There’s some irony in the fact that the second potential bidder who emerged this week is a group headed by the former president and chief executive officer of a subsidiary, St. Francis Healthcare Foundation of Hawaii. Eugene Tiwanak joined with a California-based physicians’ group, Hampton Health Ltd., in submitting their letter of intent to the healthcare system.

Details are still lacking about the business model each potential buyer proposes.

The Queen’s exploratory agreement puts it ahead in line for at least a time, and it’s not clear how that will affect the Hampton-Tiwanak proposal.

However, the interest by the Hampton group illuminates the potency of a growing sector of the health care marketplace: senior citizens. According to AARP Hawaii, the state’s population of residents age 65 and older is expected to increase by about 71 percent by 2030.

Access to doctors is becoming increasingly difficult for older patients, given the reticence of many physicians to deal with the low Medicare reimbursement rates. Both the availability and the cost of residential care are problems for elders and their families, who are more and more focused on ways to let seniors "age in place" in their own homes for as long as possible.

Hampton is a group of physicians specializing in geriatrics and internal medicine, practicing in assisted- and independent-living elder facilities and hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tiwanak said they have developed strategies aimed at supporting outpatient care and addressing concerns of family members, which would mesh well with the needs of Hawaii’s aging population.

He said Hampton has the capital to underwrite this venture, which is critical: Undercapitalization is in large part what doomed the HMC operation.

And although he declined to name them, he said the doctors’ group plans to bring along a health care management partner in any deal to run the hospitals, expertise that would be essential.

The real worrisome aspect of all this is not the due-diligence process, which could take three to six months. It’s the estimate that it could take up to two years later to get the regulatory approvals needed to reopen the hospitals. That is simply an intolerable delay.

When Queen’s took over the organ-transplant service from HMC, reviews were accelerated to minimize the problems for patients in transition.

The state certificate of need reviews accompanying any proposal to reopen a full-scale hospital is surely more complex, but the state should begin considering ways of simplifying things, for the long and short term.

It’s been proven that Hawaii can move briskly in emergency circumstances. Restoring permanent emergency and acute-care service to West Oahu, and addressing a critical need for elder-care health providers, should be approached with much the same urgency.