Hospitals find need for new equipment to adapt to obesity trend

This is a big reason why you are expected to pay more for sick care in the USA (and other places, too.)

Twice in the 14 months since St. Vincent Healthcare installed a new CT scanner, trauma patients have been flown in from other parts of the state to use it.

That’s not because the machine produces more powerful images or because the radiologists who interpret them are more skilled than in other places. The injured people were brought to Billings because they could not fit inside CT scanners closer to home.

St. Vincent’s machine can accommodate patients weighing up to 650 pounds, about 200 pounds more than most CT scanners in the state.

“We have had patients who rub against the sides as they go through,” said Dustin Strandell, the hospital’s special imaging supervisor. “Anymore, we always go with the heaviest equipment we can get.”

From waiting-room furniture and hospital gowns to wheelchairs and blood pressure cuffs, medical facilities all over the country are investing in larger and sturdier equipment for an ever-growing population of obese patients.

It is astonishingly expensive.

By one estimate, spending on heavy-duty stretchers will reach $50 million in 2012, up from $29.6 million in 2004.
Sales of mechanical lifts, which help caregivers move bedridden patients, will reach $193 million a year by 2012, according to a report published in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services.

And the cost of caring for large patients is not limited to equipment. Extra staff is often needed to move or lift big people, and caregivers are more likely to suffer back and other injuries when handling obese patients.

“We talk about escalating health care dollars,” said Dr. Christopher Sorli, director of endocrine services at Billings Clinic.

“Look who’s walking in the door. These people utilize health care dollars so much more than people who are not obese, particularly when the health care dollars are going to buy bigger equipment.”

Send them to the zoo - a place equipped to handle fat people.