Big patients, higher costs

About 15 years ago, a hospital asked Paul Fox, whose Jenkintown company sells medical furniture and equipment, if he could supply a chair for a 500-pound patient.

He was stunned.

"I had never sold a chair for somebody who weighed 500 pounds," he said.

It is a measure of how much Americans have grown that such requests are no longer unusual.

"We could sell 10 to 15 pieces a month today," Fox said.

The obesity epidemic means that more patients are maxing out equipment meant to safely hold people who weigh no more than, say, 250 to 350 pounds. As a result, hospitals are now peppering their waiting areas with tastefully understated "love seats" that can be used by the supersized, or two or three people of normal weight. They are buying overhead lifts that help nurses move patients who weigh up to 1,000 pounds and switching to stretchers safe for 750 pounds.

Hospitals are investing in MRI machines big enough to hold 550-pound patients. They are buying portable machines to extricate obese patients from their cars at the emergency department entrance. They are widening doors and switching from wall-mounted toilets, which support a mere 325 pounds, to sturdier floor-mounted models. They are buying longer needles and catheters and bigger patient gowns. They are renting or buying "big-boy" beds, commodes and walkers designed for the morbidly obese. Two Main Line Health hospitals have purchased extra-large hyperbaric chambers to aid wound healing for patients up to 550 pounds.

"Demand's been huge, I can tell you that, no pun intended," said Lauren Green-Caldwell, a spokeswoman for Hill-Rom, which makes medical equipment. The company's largest bed can support half a ton.

Stryker, another medical supply maker, estimates the U.S. bariatric market - products made for the obese - at $100 million a year, with 20 percent annual growth.

The larger patients are also driving changes in medical technology, particularly imaging equipment such as CT scanners and ultrasound, X-ray and MRI machines. In standard machines, several inches of fat can get in the way of a good picture or make it impossible. "We probably don't make anything that wouldn't be affected in one way or another by this epidemic," said Corey Miller, a GE Healthcare spokesman.