Due to the resilience and initiative of our community, at long last, West Maui will soon have a hospital of its own.

The West Maui Hospital Foundation Inc. last week announced that the groundbreaking ceremony for the West Maui Hospital and Medical Center in Kaanapali will be held on Aug. 15 at 10:30 a.m.

Newport Hospital Corp. and the West Maui Hospital Development Team are targeting late 2018 to be open to serve the public with a 25-bed critical access hospital facility that will include a 24-hour emergency room.

Plans for the campus on Kaka’alaneo Drive just mauka of Honoapiilani Highway also include a 40-bed skilled nursing facility, 40-unit assisted living facility, two medical office buildings and a future drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. West Siders can follow the progress of the West Maui Hospital and Medical Center at www.WestMauiHospitalFoundation.org.

According to the project’s website, “The West Maui Hospital and Medical Center campus is designed to be a fully integrated healthcare services provider to meet the basic health and safety needs of the 65,000-plus people who live, work and visit West Maui… This area is medically isolated from the one acute care facility on the island and there is no medical facility in West Maui that accepts ambulance patients at any time, day or night.”

The term “critical access hospital” is relevant here, because the new facility will be located in an isolated, rural area more than a 35-mile drive away from Maui Memorial Medical Center.

As last week’s massive brush fire demonstrated, West Maui residents and visitors could be cut off from the rest of the island for days in the event of a disaster.

While the new hospital will not be staffed and equipped to deal with the most serious cases – heart attack, stroke and trauma victims, for example – it will prove a much faster emergency room option for people here suffering non-life-threatening illnesses or injuries.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this project and for their efforts over many years to improve healthcare in West Maui.