It’s medical care for the super-sized set.
So many grossly overweight patients are showing up at the city’s municipal hospitals that administrators have been forced to buy heavy-duty equipment that can safely hold them — from $5,500 wide-body motorized wheelchairs to a $650,000 X-ray machine for New York’s XXXL-size customers.
Even commodes have been upgraded. Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx boasts that it now has 40 new toilets “specifically designed to support up to 500 pounds.”
“We are seeing more and more of our patients come in, and they are overweight, and that affects the way we deliver care,” said Antonio Martin, chief operating officer for the Health and Hospitals Corporation.
He said officials began noticing that standard medical equipment was no match for the growing girth of patients about three or four years ago and began purchasing modified versions for those weighing 300 pounds and up.
“We’ve seen 600 [and] 700 pounds,” he said.
But it was only this month — amid Mayor Bloomberg’s latest attempt to combat obesity by banning large-size sugared sodas — that HHC decided to publicize the issue in its newsletter. “As Patients’ Waistlines Expand, So Do Costs to Accommodate Them” was the headline over an article about the problems caused by obese patients.
The focus was on the staggering medical bills associated with so much extra poundage.
“While HHC has no direct way to estimate the full costs of obesity for the system, officials say it contributes significantly to the $348 million in estimated annual costs to care for HHC’s 58,000 diabetic patients, based on the national average of $6,000 per patient,” the article said.
Equipment for the super large comes with equally large price tags.
Coney Island Hospital bought a specially sized radiographic flouroscopy unit, a type of X-ray machine that provides moving images, for more than twice the $301,000 cost of a standard unit.
New operating tables, with capacities up to 750 pounds, for Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx and Woodhull in Brooklyn are $33,000 each. A standard large operating table goes for around $22,700. A regular commode would cost $28. The higher-capacity models fetch $70.
(
)