New hospital to be completed in 2026

The new 40-bed hospital will be constructed in October 2024.

This was confirmed in the American Samoa 2023 Recovery Plan Performance Report of the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds.

American Samoa’s limited public healthcare system has been a challenge long before the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide adequate healthcare services for the people of American Samoa.

Reliance on a single medical facility, LBJ Hospital, with its 124 medical beds and only 10 ICU beds, was a significant factor in closing our borders in March 2020 as the first line of defense as COVID-19 spread across the globe—the limited services and capacity to handle an outbreak with our current public healthcare services capabilities.

This is behind the vision by the Lemanu and Talauega administration to invest in a new 40-bed hospital to be located at Lions Park, funded by the $300 million allocated under ARPA for the healthcare sector in the territory.

The report says from the $200 million, close to half a million has been spent on this project.

Furthermore, the report outlined the revised timeline for the new hospital. The Pre-Design & Concept Phase started last November 2022 up to 24 March 2023; the Schematic Design Phase began in April 2023 and concluded last month.

It is currently in the Design Development Phase, which should be ready by November.

Then comes the Construction Documents Phase, which will last eight months starting in December.

The permitting phase should be in July, with the construction phase scheduled between 14 October 2024 to 31 December 2026.

This proposed project resulted in the Senate appealing to the Governor through a Resolution approved by Senators for the government leaders to reconsider this project and divert funds to upgrade the LBJ hospital.