August 7, 2007
Hospitals are shutting down burn centers
Hospitals are shutting down burn centers - Yahoo! News Experts say burn centers are expensive to maintain and often lose money because they are staffed with highly specialized surgeons and nurses and stocked with sophisticated equipment designed to ease patients' excruciating pain, fend off deadly complications and promote healing.The number of burn centers in the U.S. has dropped from 132 in 2004 to 127, and burn beds have fallen from 1,897 to 1,820, according to American Burn Association records compiled from voluntary reporting by hospitals.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services puts the number of burn beds even lower, at just 1,500. And most of those are already filled, with the number available on any given day variously estimated at just 300 to 500.
"If something happens and we need the beds for burn patients, it is going to be a real catastrophe," said Dr. Alan R. Dimick, past president of the American Burn Association and founder of the burn center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Some states — Mississippi, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and New Hampshire among them — have no burn centers at all. South Carolina has only a children's burn center, and there are just a few dedicated burn beds in Maine, Alaska and Hawaii.
"People ought to be pretty frightened by this," said Dr. Barbara Latenser, burn center director at the University of Iowa Hospitals. "Some people who live out West, they are 800 miles from a burn center."
[snip]
Wolfson said one recent report to the federal government showed that only 520 beds were actually available for use. Dr. William B. Hughes, director of the Temple University Hospital Burn Center in Philadelphia, said that more commonly, only about 300 beds are available at any one time.
Hughes said the United States had easily more than 3,000 dedicated burn beds in the early 1970s. But there has been a steady decline since then.
"We keep hearing we are ready for a terrorist attack," said Dr. Jeffrey Guy, director of the 29-bed Vanderbilt University Burn Center in Nashville. But even now, "our space is full almost all the time."
Guy said it is not uncommon for regional burn centers to be full and for patients to be transported long distances. "There are days we are taking burn calls for Chicago," he said.
Burn center directors say more beds are likely to disappear. Most burn centers are losing money because Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have not kept up with the cost of providing care, experts say. Private insurers often follow Medicare's lead.
Since it costs about $10,000 a day to treat a patient with severe burns, and such patients typically require 50 days of intensive care, a single uninsured patient can wreck the finances of a small burn program.
Some burn centers around the country have lost a lot of money treating uninsured adults and children who were severely burned in explosions of clandestine methamphetamine labs.
"Burn units are money-losers," Hughes said.
Maybe they can upsell burn victims botox?
Posted by TY at August 7, 2007 5:16 PM
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