Posted on Sat, Aug. 21, 2004

Hospital equipment companies catering to obese patients see booming
business

DAVID TWIDDY
Associated Press

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.

"When you have a patient who comes in who is of larger size it's a safety
issue of having the lift rather than have five or six nurses at the bedside
trying to do that," said Jennifer Ball, director of patient care for
medical/surgical. "I think we're seeing more (obese patients) and people
are more conscientious about it."

Nationwide, the $3 billion market for hospital beds, wheelchairs and other
equipment designed for plus-size patients is booming, a welcome development
for the growing number of companies that cater to the health care industry.

Kinetic Concepts Inc. of San Antonio, for example, said its line of beds
and accessories for obese patients took in $282 million last year, a 6
percent increase from the year before.

"There's more and more and more of these patients showing up at hospitals
now," said Ron Dziedziula, director of marketing for KCI's therapeutic
surfaces division.

SIZEWise Rentals of Las Vegas, another market leader, declined to discuss
financial numbers but said it has seen growth of 15 percent to 20 percent
per year and its work force has grown from 23 two years ago to 125 now.

"There's always something on TV," said COO Trever Frickey, whose company
was one of the first to market complete suites of equipment to hospitals.
"Everywhere there's this awareness of obesity."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimate that 65 percent of American
adults are overweight and 31 percent are obese.

Overweight people tend to have more health problems but they often can't
fit in standard beds or wheelchairs built for 300-pound people.

Instead, health care providers are calling companies such as KCI and
SIZEWise for beds built to support up to 1,000 pounds and wheelchairs that
are 32 inches or wider.

The equipment is not cheap, often costing much more than its regular
counterparts. A typical hospital bed can cost $2,000, but a reinforced bed
for heavier patients can cost $6,000 or more.

"Everything has to be custom," said DuWayne Kramer, president of Kansas
City, Kan.-based Burke Mobility Products, a key manufacturer. "You can't
use the same foam. It becomes more and more custom the heavier the person
gets. You have to be thinking in a different way for everything."

Kramer said he remembers when severely overweight patients first began
appearing in hospitals, forcing staff to improvise.

"In years past, people were welding beds together or putting beds on the
floor," he said. "When we first got into this (in 1979), there was nothing
out there."

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.

"With the average nursing age in the mid-40s, we need to protect our older,
more experienced nurses," Ball, of St. Luke's Hospital, said.

Novation Inc., an Irving, Texas-based hospital supply company, said its
members bought $847,000 worth of patient lifts in 2001. Last year, that
number was up to $3 million.

Another source of growth for the industry is the exploding popularity of
bariatric surgery, such as gastric bypass, or so-called "stomach stapling."

The American Society for Bariatric Surgery estimates 140,600 bariatric
procedures will be performed in the nation this year, more than eight times
the 16,200 procedures recorded 10 years ago.

That popularity - and the fact operations can cost up to $30,000 before
postoperative care - has led hospitals to open their own bariatrics
practices and even hospital wings. That means hospitals that were renting
equipment for the occasional patient are now buying whole suites of
specially designed beds, walkers and commodes.

"The volume (of operations) has dramatically increased, and that had drawn
more companies to what they see as a lucrative field for them," said Dr.
Harvey Sugerman, society president. "The number of people getting the
surgery is only 1 or 2 percent of those eligible for the surgery."

While most in the industry agree that the number of obese patients is
fueling the current boom, others say society is becoming more tolerant of
"patients of size." People who may have stayed at home for years out of
shame now get treatment and demand equipment built for their needs.

"People would not be doing this if there wasn't market share to be
captured, but the reason there is a market share is that this population
has been underserved," said Walter Lindstrom, founding partner of the San
Diego-based Obesity Law and Advocacy Center. "This isn't just for bariatric
surgery. Bariatric patients also need to get their gall bladders taken out
or they get cancer."

Looking ahead, many company officials said they didn't foresee a downturn
for their products unless the country undergoes a fundamental shift in how
it views diet and exercise. In the meantime, with federal statistics
showing that 15 percent of children are now overweight, a second surge of
potential customers may not be too far over the horizon.