Shriners Mobil Unit

By Beth Hillyer,
HONOLULU (KHNL)--Shriners hospital is building a new hosptial. But administrators weren't about to cancel operations during the two-year construction project.

They brought in a new mobile surgical unit. it's an an innovative way to still serve island keiki and build a new hospital at the same time. In order to continue surgical proceedures they brought in what looks like a double wide trailer.
Micah Salazar is recovering from surgery, ready to go home to Kauai. His family is grateful that Shriners was able to schedule surgeries even during construction.
The hosptial is being completely re-built and administrators didn't want to cancel surgeries.

They invested a million dollars in this mobile surgical unit.
"We do one surgery at a time, we do 50 procedures a month," said Surgery Services Manager Richard Dibucci.
It's a modern MASH unit. "If this were set up in a war zone it would have 1-2-3 tables where you would take of trauma cases, get them stabilized and get them out," said Dibucci.

The surgical unit is made out of aluminum and stainless steel. It has all the modern equipment of any operation room. There is also a recovery room.
This mobile surgical unit has been in operation here at Shriner's Hospital for the past year. In just one day they perform up to six operations on Keiki from both Hawaii and the pacific.
"The process is going very well. The families like it the staff like it we increased our same day surgery use by three times what we were doing."
"When they told us this was a mobile unit it came on a barge through the Panama Canal, brand new took pictures of it growing up remember watching MASH this is a MASH unit state of the art," said Maika's Grandfather, Raymond

The hospital renovation and the million dollar surgical unit are all funded by donations.
"The doctors, the level of care, the professionalism they showed it was awesome," said Raymond.
Please copy the following link for more Information and Video story from KHNL Ch.8 "Shriners Hospital Shows Off Mobile Surgical Unit" www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?S=8308314