Hospital equipment companies catering to obese patients see booming

Subject: Hospital equipment companies catering to obese patients see
booming
From: Newcombe
Date: 8/21/2004 9:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: VHSVc.207140$eM2.130139@attbi_s51

Reese Alexis wrote:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - When St. Luke's Hospital renovated 14 neurology
intensive care rooms, officials included a feature that is becoming a
standard in the health care industry.

Each room comes with a ceiling-mounted patient lift system that can handle
up to 600 pounds, a $6,000-per-room expense hospital officials said is far
from an extravagance.

The equipment can be a blessing for hospital staff, who have the
third-highest rate of injuries or illnesses among industries with 100,000
or more reported cases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many of those injuries come from lifting and moving patients, an activity
made more dangerous when the patient is obese.

Yet another example of the excess costs and even INJURY that obese
people impose on the rest of us. What a disgrace that these infantile
people cannot control themselves. Disgusting.

Maybe we should require fast food restaurants to put warning labels on their
food like cigarette makers do.



N.