Ambulances to charge extra for obese patients

[JonLP24]

TOPEKA, Kan - The memory still bothers Ken Keller: A panicked 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.

The crew offered an idea to Keller, who was then an investigator with the Kansas Board of Emergency Medical Services. Could they use a forklift to load the man - bed and all - onto a flatbed truck? Keller agreed: There was no other choice.

"I'm sure it was terribly embarrassing to be in his own bed, riding on the back of a flatbed with straps tying him down, going to the hospital, and then have a forklift at the hospital unload him," Keller said.

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.

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2009/10/22/20091022ambulancefees.html

[graywarrior]

1. This is a 1000 lb guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTwX0N5JVaE


He couldn't get out of his house til he lost over 200 lbs. I don't know if he ever lost the rest of the weight, but the effort it took to get him out of the house after he lost the weight was a challenge.