Hospital ready for its largest patients

Chris Baker says the hoist in rooms for the largest patients can lift 500kg. Photo / Christine Cornege

The increasing number of extremely obese patients - some weighing more than 300kg - has forced Waikato Hospital to open rooms designed to cater to their needs.

The hospital's new $48 million Acute Services Building opens next month with corridors that can fit three beds, wide doorways and some beds that can take up to 370kg. .

Waikato District Health Board's programme management office project manager, Chris Baker, said the new building had facilities that could accommodate bariatric patients - people whose health or abilities are affected by their weight - in six rooms.

"It may seem strange but we are seeing an increasing number of large patients that take special nursing," he said.

"So we have provisioned the facility for these sorts of patients."

Mr Baker said it was now not unusual for hospital staff to see patients weighing more than 300kg two or three times a year.

He said mobile hoists were still in use to shift large patients, but the new rooms had steel-reinforced roofs and ceiling-mounted hoists which could lift up to 500kg, raising and lowering a patient anywhere in the room or its ensuite.

"We still lift them with mobile hoists which aren't as easy to use - you can imagine trying to push a hoist on soft lino with a 250kg person in the sling, it is quite difficult."

The 2006/07 New Zealand Health Survey found that one in four or 26.5 per cent of all New Zealanders were obese.

This is a 150 per cent increase since 1980 and one of the highest rates in the Western world.

It found that Pacific men and women were two and a half times more likely to be obese than men and women in the total population, while 41.7 per cent of Maori adults were obese.

The issue has been highlighted further by the popularity of TV shows including The Biggest Loser and Big Fat Family Challenge, a TV One show that follows the fortunes of the four large members of the Chawne family in Britain.

St John Ambulance central region spokeswoman Rachael Quinn said paramedics also faced a "growing problem" in the treatment and movement of obese patients.

She said some ambulances had been modified and had stretchers with winches and capable of carrying 750kg.

St John also has other specialist equipment including an air mattress that acts like a hovercraft to move patients at the scene or an airbed made up of stacked compartments to "airlift" the patient level with a stretcher.

In the past, people were sometimes dragged across the floor before being manhandled into a standard ambulance.

Ms Quinn said that St John relied on firefighters to help ambulance staff move obese or larger patients.

Health Waikato chief operating officer Jan Adams said a specialist healthcare consultancy recommended expanding the Acute Services Building, which is above the hospital's new emergency department, to include three medical wards and a medical assessment and planning unit.

Wards five, 22, 23 and the medical short stay unit will move into the new facility over two days next month.