Carrying on for Emma
150 years after Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV founded what today is The Queen’s Medical Center, president Art Ushijima and a world-class staff continue to give Hawaii residents care that is, well, on the cutting edge
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the Queen’s Breast Center was granted national accreditation by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers this past July, an honor bestowed to a mere 50 centers of the more than 5,700 registered hospitals in the U.S.
But the feather in Queen’s cap came in April when the hospital achieved Magnet status, the highest institutional honor awarded for hospital excellence by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
“The Magnet designation is really a major accomplishment,” Ushijima says, mentioning that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine are just a few of the other 352 healthcare organizations in the nation to achieve the status.
“Certainly the award and the recognition is something that we’re happy about, but what I think emerged from (going through the three-year process) is that people in different departments of the hospital learned a lot about each other in ways they would never have learned had we not gone through the Magnet effort. And I think that helped improve how we deliver care to the patients.”
With healthcare at the forefront of the Obama administration, it is presumable that the issue will remain a hot-button topic for years to come. And while Ushijima says there is no clear-cut solution to health-care reform, he believes every American deserves some form of healthcare. He also foresees that a health-care reform bill will be passed by the end of this year, with coverage levels and financing options the key components of said bill.
“The healthcare conundrum is complex, but I think we have to set a form of principles in terms of what is it that we are going to provide in terms of support,” he states, adding that The Queen’s Health Systems provided more than $45 million in healthcare services, education, charitable contributions and uncompensated care in both fiscal year 2008 and 2007. “The primary purpose of our role here is to take care of patients and to do a good job, and that’s what we’re trying to do. As long as the needs are still in healthcare - and I expect that they will be - we will hopefully continue to do a better job each year.”
To that end, Ushijima says The Queen’s Health Systems and its constituents can only continue to move forward as new developments in the medical and healthcare fields arise.
“What is unfolding in medicine through the advancements in technology and genetics along with the emergence of personalized medicine will dramatically alter how patients will be cared for,” he predicts for QMC’s next 150 years of serving Hawaii’s population. “I anticipate that health disparities among the various ethnic groups will no longer exist, and in Hawaii, Native Hawaiians will not experience the higher incidences of morbidity and mortality in major diseases such as cancers, diabetes and coronary artery disease.”
But until that day comes, patients can rest assured that they will continue to receive quality care at Queen’s for whatever may ail them.
“Progress seems slow and imperceptible over a short span of time, but measured over a long period - such as the life of our organization - one can appreciate the magnitude of the collective efforts of many who have shared in this endeavor and who have made a positive difference in our community and in the lives of the people we serve,” says Ushijima, shifting his gaze upward as if to acknowledge King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, though no longer here, live on through the doctors, nurses and staff at Queen’s.
“The journey never ends because the world will never be perfect, but that makes the effort worthwhile because each positive step does, in some way, make a difference.”
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