Pacific Magazine > Magazine > August 1, 2002

Healthcare

Pacific Health Leader Remembered

Arnold Baptiste Sr. Leaves A Lasting Pacific Legacy

By Scott Whitney

Arnold Baptiste, Sr.

This June 19, the Pacific lost one of its key healthcare innovators. When he died at age 67, Arnold Baptiste, Sr. was CEO of Hawaii Pacific Medical Referrals, a company he had founded to assist Island countries and territories in providing acute or specialized health services that could not be done at home. His untimeley death from complications of pneumonia left long-time friends around the Pacific bereft.

Baptiste was born on the Hawaiian island of Kaua‘i. His father was the chairman of the Kaua‘i county board of supervisors for almost two decades. Baptiste followed his father’s path closely. After graduating from the University of Hawai‘i and serving in the U.S. Army, Baptiste and his wife, Emily Marciel-Baptiste, moved to Marin County in northern California. There he was elected Marin County supervisor and became chairman of the board of supervisors, the Marin County Transit District and the Housing Authority. He was also a board member of the Golden Gate Bridge District.

In California, he was also noted for his conservation activism and helped acquire over 7,000 acres of land for public use as permanent open space. There is a hiking trail named after him in Marin County.

In 1980, Arnold and Emily moved back to Hawai‘i and he became an executive with a Mainland insurance company that was operating in Hawai‘i. When the company pulled out of the state, Baptiste decided to found his own insurance company, specializing in health coverage for small businesses. That company, HMAA, started issuing policies in 1990 and is still in operation, headed by his son, Arnie Baptiste Jr.

As he was doing this, Arnold Sr. started talking with old friends of his from the Marshall Islands. He had kept in contact for many years with Pacific leaders he had first met when they were all students at the University of Hawai‘i. Arnie Jr. explains: “The Marshall Islands government was getting cut off from sending patients to hospitals in Hawai‘i because they were behind in paying their bills. First of all, my father realized that the Island governments were paying too much. They were in essence paying retail. As a health insurer he knew that you could negotiate rates with hospitals and save 30 to 40 percent.” So Arnold Sr. formed a new company called HPMR, Hawai‘i Pacific Medical Referrals. He went to the Hawai‘i hospitals and promised them they would get paid for their Marshallese patients, and he had the Marshall

Islands government deposit $500 thousand in trust with HPMR. With this, he could assure the hospitals they’d get paid for their work. “And since 1996,” his son adds, “he’s saved the Marshallese government about $17 million off what they would have been charged before.” That savings can be used to improve healthcare back home. “What dad was really trying to promote was self-sufficiency. His goal was to save money and improve services.”

Now HPMR is doing the same thing for American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. Arnold Baptiste Sr., a real health innovator, will be sorely missed.