Kona Community Hospital (KCH) is joining Queen’s North Hawaii Community Hospital and Hilo Medical Center in resuming a number of “normal” services, including some elective surgeries.  KCH is offering a limited number of elective outpatient services and procedures including imaging, respiratory therapy, rehabilitation services and surgery.

In order to manage and plan for the COVID-19 pandemic, KCH stopped all elective, nonemergent procedures on March 19. Since then, many patients have had to postpone important procedures that address health issues.

Whereas emergent surgical procedures address immediately life-threatening conditions, elective or non-emergent procedures often provide lifesaving treatment to keep people alive and healthy.

Kona Community Hospital is gradually resuming elective procedures while closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation in West Hawaii.

“In alignment with our emergency management plan to be prepared for a possible surge, we will also monitor hospital utilization such as PPE inventory supplies and use rates, as well as staffing availability,” said Dr. Scott Cassidy, COVID-19 Incident Commander at Kona Community Hospital.

The KCH Incident Command team is working with guidelines developed by the American Hospital Association, American College of Surgeons (ACS), American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) and Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) to ensure the safety of elective procedures.

Patients whose procedures have been postponed will be contacted to schedule those procedures with KCH.

Kona Community Hospital admitted one positive COVID-19 patient on Wednesday, April 22.  Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim said that patient was only in the hospital overnight before being discharged to recover at home.  At the time KCH announced they had implemented procedures to ensure there was no cross-infection:  the patient was in a negative pressure room, there were special disinfection procedures in place, and they had minimized the number of employees entering the room.