RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, over the years, St. Francis Medical Center has been a leader in medical and healthcare innovation; and

WHEREAS, in 1987, physicians at St. Francis, led by Livingston M.F. Wong, M.D., performed the first heart transplant in Hawaii thereby enabling residents to have heart transplants here instead of relocating to the mainland for such services; and

WHEREAS, since that time, more than forty successful heart transplants have been performed at St. Francis Medical Center; and

WHEREAS, despite this number of successful transplants, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) denied St. Francis Medical Center certification for reimbursement because the number of transplants performed in Hawaii falls below the requisite number set by CMS; and

WHEREAS, this forces Medicare and Medicaid eligible residents to either bear full financial responsibility for the cost of a heart transplant here in Hawaii or relocate to the mainland to have the cost of the transplant covered by CMS at a CMS certified facility; and

WHEREAS, St. Francis Medical Center provides a vital service to the people of Hawaii, and this State will likely continue to fall below the requisite number of heart transplants given its distant location and small population; and

WHEREAS, St. Francis Medical Center's heart transplant program has applied to CMS for a volume exemption in order to obtain the needed CMS certification to better serve Medicare and Medicaid eligible heart transplant recipients in Hawaii; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-third Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2005, the Senate concurring, that the Legislature supports St. Francis Medical Center's efforts to obtain CMS certification for its heart transplant program and strongly urges the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to grant the heart transplant program at St. Francis Medical Center a volume exemption; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the Governor, members of the Hawaii congressional delegation, the Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Chief Executive Officer of St. Francis Healthcare System, and the Medical Director of the Heart Transplant Program at St. Francis Medical Center.

Report Title:

Medicare and Medicaid; Certification for Reimbursement; Heart Transplants