Hilo Benioff Medical Center opens new specialty care building

Patients in East Hawaii now have a new place in Hilo for urgent visits and several hard-to-find specialties without making the trip off island. Hilo Benioff Medical Center opened Medical Office Building 3 at East Hawaii Health Clinics on Waianuenue Avenue, a two-story, 20,000-square-foot facility at 1285 Waianuenue Ave. that brings urgent care, neurology, general surgery, gynecologic surgery, plastic surgery and vascular surgery under one roof.

The grand opening on June 11 drew roughly 100 health care professionals, elected officials and community leaders, along with the providers and staff who helped bring the building online. State Sen. Lorraine Inouye praised the addition as a direct help to community health needs, while state Rep. Matthias Kusch highlighted the collaboration and persistence that carried the project from planning to completion. For families, kūpuna and workers in Hilo and the surrounding districts, the practical result is more specialty care available locally, especially for same-day needs and procedures that previously could mean more time, more travel and more scheduling strain.

The opening marks the end of a multiyear effort. Groundbreaking for the broader East Hawaii Health Clinics and Hilo Benioff expansion took place in March 2024, and the building itself had been described years earlier as a nearly 20,000-square-foot, two-story project across from Hilo Medical Center. A later report placed its cost at roughly $15 million and said it would expand health services and cancer treatment options.

The new clinic building is also part of a larger hospital expansion announced in April 2024, which included plans for a new 19-bed intensive care unit and 36 additional hospital beds. That broader effort was backed by public and private funding, including a $50 million gift from Marc Benioff and Lynne Benioff.

Local firms helped deliver the project. Isemoto Contracting served as general contractor, and Fleming and Associates handled the architecture. During construction, parking areas at Hilo Benioff Medical Center and the clinics across the street were temporarily shifted to accommodate work on Waianuenue Avenue, a sign of how closely the expansion affected daily patient access while it was being built.

With Medical Office Building 3 now open, East Hawaii has one more piece of health care infrastructure in place, and one more step toward keeping more care in Hilo.