Appropriates $60,000 for Lanai Community Hospital for two vehicles for patient and other transport uses, to be expended by the Hawaii health systems corporation.

A BILL FOR AN ACT

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that Lanai Community Hospital serves long-term care patients on the island of Lanai. The hospital has two vehicles at present, a 1987 passenger car and a 1988 passenger van both purchased as used vehicles in 1994. The interior of the latter has been stripped to haul freight from the docks and supplies, equipment, building materials, and tools of visiting workers. The passenger car has been used for transporting laboratory specimens to the airport. Even so, for the past three years, Lanai Community Hospital has depended primarily on the use of a private vehicle belonging to one of its staff to pick up consultants at the harbor or the airport, transporting nursing staff, and running other errands, amounting to about one hundred miles per week. Because the hospital's long-term care patients are all wheelchair-bound, a van with a ramp is needed to transport them. A passenger car is also needed urgently.

SECTION 2. There is appropriated out of the general revenues of the State of Hawaii the sum of $60,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary for fiscal year 2006-2007, for one passenger van equipped with a ramp to handle wheelchairs and one passenger car for general transportation purposes for the Lanai Community Hospital.

The sum appropriated shall be expended by the Hawaii health systems corporation for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2006.