NHS spends £3.5m on new equipment to lif t up fat people

AMBULANCE bosses have had to spend £3.5million on specialist equipment to treat patients weighing up to 70 stone.

It follows a 143 per cent rise in severely overweight Scots needing an ambulance – up from 7,000 in 2010 to more than 17,000 last year.

The money was spent on extrawide wheelchairs, Zimmer frames for those weighing up to 50st and super- strength mats to drag patients who cannot be carried.

It also went towards patient lifting cushions – inflatable devices which slide underneath patients weighing up to 70st before being filled with air, bringing them to their feet.

The figures were disclosed via a Freedom of Information request to the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS). But it refused to provide figures for the cost of equipment, claiming the details were ‘commercially sensitive’.

The documents provided show the SAS owns 1,048 pieces of

Costly: Extra-wide wheelchair specialist bariatric equipment for overweight patients.

Its fleet of ambulances has 53 evacuation mats and sheets. Manufacturers’ prices available online lead to an estimated cost of £26,265 for these items.

The SAS has 122 chairs, electric and manual, to carry patients weighing up to 50st. The estimated cost of these is £673,000.

It also bought 16 reinforced Zimmer frames, at a likely cost of £1,500; 16 extra-wide wheelchairs at an estimated £46,400; and 151 trolley cots, which would have cost up to £558,700.

Most is likely to have been spent on 690 patient lifting cushions – an estimated £2,135,550.

The total estimated cost was £3,441,415.

Meanwhile, the number of incidents where ambulance staff are called to deal with overweight patients has soared. In the past year, ambulance crews responded to 206 emergency i ncidents involving overweight patients – up from 56 in 2010-11.

Crews drove 17,178 obese patients using specialist equipment in 2014 – up from 7,101 in 2010.

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said: ‘Until the NHS rules are rewritten, it has to spend this kind of money.

‘There are so many people overweight through no fault of their own, through genetic conditions. And there are a lot of people not able to take the onslaught of the food and advertising industry.

‘Until that is changed, we have to foot the bill. Of course, the money should be spent preventing obesity, but the prognosis for that doesn’t look too rosy.

‘The number of patient transfers has more than doubled since 2010 and that is very concerning – but more concerning is that it will be increasing more.’

Scottish Tory health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: ‘Scotland’s obesity problem is getting worse and costing our NHS millions.

‘The concern is we are heading towards a tipping point where the NHS will struggle to cope with the number of obese cases.’

An SAS spokesman said: ‘We transfer over a million patients to and from healthcare appointments, of whom 2 per cent may require specialist support due to obesity. This rate is increasing.

‘The majority of our frontline emergency vehicles are bariatric capable, as are nearly all Patient Transport Service vehicles purchased since 2007.’

last month, the National Association of Funeral Directors said more Scots were needing metre-wide ‘American style’ caskets. Some cemeteries are charging families more for the larger plots required to bury them.

‘Prognosis doesn’t

look too rosy’