Location: Honolulu, Hawaii

Problem: Legionella outbreak at Queens Medical Center.

Solution: Rural Community Assistance Corporation’s (RCAC) technical assistance staff helped the hospital improve its chlorination system and provided training to water system operators.

The Queens Medical Center (QMC) was founded in 1959 by Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV to provide quality health care services for all native Hawaiians and other Hawaiian residents.

The hospital’s water sources include an artesian spring under the hospital grounds in Honolulu. In May 2018, several QMC patients contracted Legionella, and one death was attributed to the outbreak. Hawaii’s State Department of Health Safe Drinking Water Branch recommended that Queens Medical Center work with RCAC to improve its chlorination system with emphasis on residual maintenance, chemical feed adjustments and monitoring.

RCAC technical assistance (TA) providers Kevin Baughman, Barry Pollock and Jim McVeigh provided initial TA via online training for facilities staff, water system operators and hospital management. Baughman and Pollock followed up the online training with an onsite assessment at the hospital.

Baughman had worked with the system in the past under RCAC’s circuit rider program and was therefore familiar with its structure. Both he and Pollock will continue to work with QMC, to help it understand, vet, and implement guidelines and recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and NALCO Water, a water treatment company, to improve the drinking water system.