The Queen's Medical Center

Description

Queen's is the largest private hospital in Hawaii, licensed to operate with 505 small care beds and 28 sub-acute beds. With 3,600 employees—including 1,160 nurses and over 1,100 physicians on staff—it is also one of the state of Hawaii’s largest employers. It is a Level II trauma center and the only designated trauma center in the state of Hawaii. It is located in downtown Honolulu, southwest of Interstate H-1.

As the leading medical referral center in the Pacific Basin, Queen's is widely known for its programs in cancer, cardiovascular disease, neuroscience, orthopedics, surgery, trauma, behavioral medicine and women’s health. Queen’s offers a comprehensive range of specialties, including gastroenterology, genetics, geriatrics, gynecology, neonatology, obstetrics, psychiatry, pulmonology, and radiology. It is one of the few hospitals in the state with both a 24-hour emergency psychiatry consultation service and a busy yet robust consultation-liaison service. Kekela is the 20-bed acute adult inpatient psychiatric unit, and the Family Treatment Center is Queen's child and adolescent psychiatry inpatient unit supporting acute and residential beds with up to 20 patients at any one time. Queen’s is the only Level II trauma center in Hawaii verified by the American College of Surgeons. The Queen’s Medical Center serves as the primary teaching hospital for most of the residency programs sponsored by the University of Hawaii at Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine. It also serves as one of the clinical training sites for medical students completing their third-year clinical clerkship, electives and sub-internships.

Queen's is accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and affiliated with the Voluntary Hospitals of America (VHA). The medical center is also approved to participate in residency training by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

In 2009, The Queen’s Medical Center achieved Magnet status from the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Magnet recognition is held by six percent of hospitals in the United States. Queen’s is the first hospital in Hawai‘i to achieve Magnet status.

The Queen’s Medical Center is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation.

History

In King Kamehameha IV's initial speech to the legislature in January 1855, the King proposed creating a hospital for the people of Hawaii. At that time, the continued existence of the Hawaiian race was seriously threatened by the influx of disease brought to the islands by foreign visitors. A smallpox epidemic in 1853 had killed thousands of the dwindling population. French-American physician Charles Guillou proposed building a public hospital in April 1858. When Emma's adoptive father Dr. Thomas Rooke died in 1858, all his instruments were donated to the hospital effort. In January 1859 a committee of Robert Crichton Wyllie (a former physician) and David L Gregg was formed to plan the hospital investigate funding. Queen Emma enthusiastically supported the dream of a hospital, and the two campaigned to make it a reality. They personally went door-to-door soliciting the necessary funding. The royal couple exceeded their goal in just over a month, raising $13,530. In turn, the Legislature appropriated $6,000. The first hospital physician was William Hillebrand, who served until 1871.

The site picked in 1860 was an area called Manamana owned by Caesar Kapaʻakea, patriarch of the House of Kalākaua. The architect Theodore Heuck was selected for the first building. The name was changed to The Queen's Medical Center in 1967.

The hospital was featured in two episodes of the television series Trauma: Life in the ER.