Jim Higgins can remember exactly why he stepped up his involvement with the Kona Hospital Foundation.
It was a 3 a.m. phone call, one every parent dreads. His son had been in a bad car accident and had been taken to the emergency room.
“His life was saved by Dr. Peebles and the crew,” Higgins said.
At that point, Higgins told his wife he would devote his life to doing what he could to support the hospital. And he has, helping the organization raise and donate more than $5 million for hospital projects.
“If you walk around the hospital, you cannot come across an area we don’t have our fingerprints in,” Higgins said.
Allen Wilcox, Dr. Garold Enloe, Fred Fujimoto and Richard Ishida established the foundation in June 1984, and this year marks its 30th anniversary. Their mission was to provide a philanthropic, fundraising organization dedicated to the endowment of medical equipment and technology to Kona Community Hospital, officials said in a written statement issued this week.
Higgins said he remembered the early conversations when the four men were creating the foundation, and he recalled originally helping as its investment adviser.
His first big project was 20 or 25 years ago, raising about $80,000 for improvements to the obstetrics department. Higgins said people used to joke about giving birth in a barn when talking about deliveries at Kona Community Hospital.
Raising that much money “told us it can be done,” he said. “We’ve taken on bigger projects. Only the man upstairs knows how many people’s lives have been saved.”
Getting people over their initial impression of the hospital — generally an unfavorable one, based on its appearance — has been the biggest challenge to fundraising. But Higgins said he is often approached by someone who wanted to say how much they valued the hospital after ending up there for treatment.
“All the money we raise goes to new equipment, technology” and other such needs, Higgins said. “None of it goes to operating costs. There’s never enough money. The state has a lot of entities at the trough.”
Kona Community Hospital is part of Hawaii Health Systems Corp., a semipublic health system that gets financial subsidies for the hospitals each year.
“It is a safety net system,” Higgins said. “Basically, when you’re having to cover more and more people, something’s got to give.”
Higgins said it is inevitable that West Hawaii will eventually get a new hospital. The old one just can’t grow much more.
He said he remains in constant contact with CEO Jay Kreuzer about the hospital’s needs.
Major projects include the Radiation Oncology Center, the Imaging Center, Nuclear Medicine Suite and the Outpatient Chemotherapy Building, as well as the Adopt A Room and Buy A Bed projects. Other completed projects are the emergency helicopter landing area and the funding of medical equipment for various hospital departments including the Cardiology Clinic, the Obstetrics Unit and the Surgical Services department.