Obesity Creates Another Crisis
This is partly based on a recent AP story
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While we discuss health-care reform, healthy food and environmental conditions, as it turns out, there’s still another issue to be addressed – extremely heavy patients. Although morbidly obese people can probably be found in almost every country and on almost every continent, this could most likely be filed under the ‘Only in America” category.
A panicked Kansas ambulance crew had a critically ill patient, but the man weighed more than 1,000 pounds and could not fit inside the vehicle. And the stretcher wasn’t sturdy enough to hold him.
Finally somebody had an idea. They could use a forklift to load the man – bed and all – onto a flatbed truck. There was no other choice.
As the nation battles the obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people.
The move to modify ambulances is just the latest effort to accommodate plus-sized patients. Some hospitals already offer specially designed beds, wheelchairs, walkers and even commodes.
Ambulance companies say it’s time for insurance providers, Medicaid and Medicare, or patients themselves to begin paying the added costs, which are cutting into their razor-thin profit margins.
In the past, ambulance companies often absorbed the extra expense of serving the obese. Now they are adding charges similar to those already imposed on intensive-care patients, people requiring multiple medications and patients on ventilators.
Transporting extremely heavy people costs about 2.5 times as much as normal-weight patients. It takes more time to move them and requires three to four times more crewmembers, who often must use expensive specialty equipment.
Shawnee County Commission last summer raised ambulance fees from $629 to $1,172 for critical-care patients and people who are 500 pounds or heavier.
In Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Nebraska cities of Omaha and Lincoln, the fees are $1,421 for an extremely obese patient, compared with $758 for a typical patient.
Before those ambulances had heavy-duty equipment, crews just had to make do, often calling in burly firefighters to help lift patients.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long said that nearly a third of Americans are obese. About 5 percent of the population is morbidly obese, meaning they are more than 100 pounds heavier than their ideal weight.
Some critics say the higher fees are a form of discrimination.
Higher payments for heavy patients are commonplace in Oregon and Washington because the insurance industry there acknowledges the additional costs.
Ambulance companies say the insurance industry is their best hope for closing the financial gap.
As with any medical service, ambulance companies bill private insurers or government health care programs. Medicare and Medicaid do not pay extra for transporting the extremely obese, although that’s something the ambulance industry wants to change. The uninsured are charged directly, but many of them cannot pay.
Proponents of the extra fees say obese patients are grateful for equipment that eliminates the need for flatbed trucks and forklifts.
Like many ambulance companies, a unit in Topeka recently spent about $10,000 to retrofit an ambulance with equipment that accommodates patients weighing up to 1,600 pounds. Ambulance services with helicopters also are creating larger patient compartments and adding stronger gurneys.
Sales of specialized lift systems nationwide are expected to reach $193 million by 2012, up from $75 million in 2004, according to EMS Insider, an industry newsletter. The sale of specialized stretchers is expected to nearly double to $50 million in 2012.
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This is just another example of american
insurance companies – not taking a fair look
at the situation.
extremely obese patients should have their
own fleet of ambulences, hospitals and even
strong lifters to handle their needs.
no I really mean it; but the fact is,
that all costs money, so somebody will have
to pay. no doubt it will be all of us, instead
of the consumers of the specialized services.
the cheapest way out – allow people to get
bariatric surgery with the blessing of the
insurance co’s. when they reach critical mass
like you said 100 lbs over. it would help everybody.
somethings are just common sense, to logical people.
Surgery should be the very last option for anybody. How about stopping eating crap and exercising some?