Over Decades, Hawaii Cut Acute Care Hospital Beds. Then Came The Pandemic … Health and government officials argued that advances in medicine and patient preference reduced the need for the beds, but now, there aren’t enough.
The alarming prospect of rationed care is revealing an underlying problem: As a result of government policy, Hawaii does not have enough acute care hospital beds.
In fact, Hawaii has among the fewest beds per capita of any state in the nation, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nationwide, the U.S. average is 2.4 beds per 1,000 people, but Hawaii has only 1.9.
Only eight states have fewer beds per thousand people, according to the Kaiser foundation. Two of those with the lowest numbers, Idaho and Oregon, are similarly running out of intensive care beds, with government officials warning that it may be difficult to provide the same level of care as in more normal times.
All three states had prided themselves on cost reduction strategies that made health care operations more profitable in good times despite the reality that epidemics are a recurring and predictable part of the human condition — Spanish flu, bubonic plague, syphilis, respiratory viruses, among others.
