Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2004

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 2956 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to make the provision of emergency aeromedical services permissive rather than mandatory.

Testimony in support of this measure was received from the Department of Health. The United Public Workers, American Medical Response, and a Maui paramedic submitted testimony in support of emergency aeromedical hospital services.

Your Committee finds that this measure which, as written, primarily makes the provision of emergency aeromedical services permissive rather than mandatory, essentially reverses the Legislature's override of the Governor's veto of S.B. 745 during the 2003 Special Session. S.B. 745, which subsequently became Act 2, Session Laws of Hawaii, Special Session of 2003, established aeromedical emergency medical services for Maui county, the only four-island county in the State. In addition, this measure makes the permissive provision subject to the availability of funds, which your Committee finds automatically applies to all appropriation measures and thus need not be reiterated.

Your Committee further finds that the grounds raised for opposition was that setting a standard of care for aeromedical emergency medical services for the State might raise a liability issue for the State for residents of counties without such service. Your Committee finds that this argument is without merit as this decision is a discretionary function of the government. Your Committee further finds that the State utilizes its discretionary function regarding ground ambulance service, which has been mandated but, as is clear through legislation to add ground ambulance service to certain rural communities, not all communities have such a service.

Your Committee has amended this measure by deleting its contents and inserting provisions to require the Department of Health to monitor the need in Kauai county and inform the Legislature when that county reaches a sufficient sustained level of need for an aeromedical emergency service.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2956, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2956, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.