Our Hospital’s History

Though medicine has seen many changes since the hospital was founded, Castle Medical Center has never lost sight of the human side of health care. Today, Castle’s commitment to providing innovative health care is still coupled with concern for each patient’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Since Castle first opened its doors in 1963, the hospital’s primary mission has been to meet the needs of the community. Forty-five years ago, Windward residents welcomed their new hospital with sighs of relief. Finally, care was available close to home.

For years, Windward residents had contended with part-time ambulance service and unpredictable trips over the old Pali Road. In an emergency—when immediate medical care was critical—residents prayed that rockslides and sudden downpours wouldn’t slow their journey.

A small community group, long aware of these problems, launched a campaign in 1953 to establish a hospital in Windward O‘ahu. The late Robert Chung, M.D., and Ms. Carolyn Rankin were the hospital’s major proponents, and numerous fundraisers built financial and community support for the project.

The campaign continued to gain momentum. A series of articles in The Honolulu Advertiser documented the seven-year struggle for a Windward hospital. Castle Ranch donated ten acres of land as a site for the facility. The Seventh-day Adventist Church offered $600,000 towards construction, and $170,000 was raised through community contributions.

Though the Governor’s Hospital Advisory Council and the 30th Territorial Legislature backed the project, the state Board of Health refused to designate Windward O‘ahu as a separate hospital zone. As a result, federal funds for construction were stalled.

Not long after, two separate incidents further emphasized the need for a community hospital. Five men were injured when a roof collapsed at the nearly completed Cornet Store in Kailua. The next month, a two-year-old Kailua girl choked to death on a pill. Doctors in Honolulu felt her life might have been saved if a hospital operating room had been close to home.

The following month, the state Board of Health approved the proposed hospital, and federal funds were made available.

The $2 million facility opened Jan. 16, 1963, a little more than a year after ground was broken. Castle Memorial Hospital, named after Harold K. L. Castle who donated the land, opened with 72 beds and 14 bassinets. In 1983, the hospital changed its name to Castle Medical Center to reflect the growth into outpatient services and programs.

Today

Castle Medical Center is now a 160-bed facility with more than 1,000 employees. On the medical staff are more than 256 physicians in a wide range of specialties and subspecialties. Last year, Castle provided care for nearly 6,500 inpatients, more than 52,000 outpatients, and more than 21,000 emergency patients.

Castle Medical Center, a non-profit institution, serves all of O‘ahu and is the primary health care facility for Windward O‘ahu. The hospital is owned and operated by Adventist Health, a Seventh-day Adventist health care system.

Castle is a full-service medical center offering a wide range of inpatient, outpatient, and home-based services. See the Medical Services section of this Web site for descriptions of Castle’s services.

Many of Castle’s most successful programs are focused on preventive medicine and the promotion of healthy life habits. Castle’s Wellness and Lifestyle Medicine Center, the Performance and Rehabilitation Centers in Kailua and Kāne‘ohe, the employee wellness program, and Castle’s vegetarian cafeteria, The Bistro, all support this mission.

Adding to the many programs offered, Castle Medical Center recently introduced the Surgical Weight Loss Institute—a team approach to weight-loss surgery. In addition to working closely with a surgeon, patients work together with a whole team of dedicated weight-loss professionals.

A wide range of classes and programs have been developed to meet the community’s health needs: birthing classes, infant care classes, vegetarian cooking classes, nutritional counseling, the HeartBeat Hawai‘i coronary risk evaluation program, lifestyle weight management, smoking cessation program, and aerobics and exercise classes. Free seminars are also provided to the public, sometimes with nationally known speakers, on a variety of topics, such as nutrition, spiritual wellness, and advances in medicine. Also free are our support groups on caregiving, bereavement, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, brain injury, attitudinal healing, and weight loss.