Five out of seven primary care clinics have closed their doors since 2002 on the north shore of Kauai. We knew something was wrong, and so the Kauai Community Health Alliance was born.
Health is our most precious gift—ask anyone who has lived a day without it.
It follows that healthcare delivery must be strongly woven into the fabric of our neighborhoods, for without it our community cannot long sustain itself.
Integral to sustainability is self-reliance. For a community this means buying from local farms and supporting local businesses, it means harmonious communities with places to gather, with areas to exercise, with traditions to share. Importantly, it means the best possible healthcare for everyone—and it means we, as a community, must take responsibility.
Continued reliance upon insurance companies to adequately pay for our healthcare needs has become unrealistic and destined for failure.
Five out of seven primary care clinics have closed their doors since 2002 on the north shore of Kauai.
At our own clinic, Hale Lea Medicine, we realized we were spending huge amounts of time and resources fighting with insurance companies who always had the last say. Because of insurance carrier restrictions patients would often get the cheapest, not necessarily the best, pharmaceutical medications. Sometimes worse, a patient’s insurance would pay for none at all.
Uncovered services such as therapeutic massage, acupuncture, nutritional supplements, integrative and preventive medicine, are unaffordable to the majority.
Our clinic treated a woman with bedsores but no coverage or money for the new mattress she needed; a woman on seizure medication denied by her insurer in spite of our letters and phone calls explaining this was the only drug that controlled her seizures. These are families, neighbors and friends all living in our community.
The frustrations mounted. Disillusion followed. Our local insurance companies turned a blind eye while giving five million dollars in bonuses to their executives in one year alone. Our letters to insurers and the insurance commissioner were returned with politically correct answers empty of solutions. Like many, our busy clinic was struggling. Therefore, we decided to take matters into our own hands—by trusting it into the hands of the community it serves.
The clinic is now owned by Kauai Community Health Alliance, a not-for-profit corporation run by a community board. In this way the community itself can directly contribute, each according to their ability, and create community healthcare the way we all dream it should be.