Snow injuries 'drain' on hospital resources

Treating and transporting skiers and snowboarders admitted to Southland Hospital with serious injuries in 2009 cost at least about $550,000, a study by an orthopaedic registrar shows.

In his research, published this month in the New Zealand Medical Journal, Dr Gordon Burgess said the treatment of such injuries represented a reasonable drain on hospital resources in terms of cost and time.

His was the first study to look at the demographics, complexity and costs of such injuries and more work would be needed to see whether funding provided matched the actual costs.

Hospitals are bulk-funded through their population-based funding for treating acute injuries, including the cost of implants used.

However, the actual costs of implants did not show up in the generic coding data used to classify injuries.

Dr Burgess, who was working at Southland Hospital at the time, found that 88 patients were admitted with 92 injuries over 129 days.

More snowboarders than skiers were injured and the highest number of patients came from Australia (32).

The high number of Australians might have been related to the fact there were more Australian snowboarders than usual following a big tourist promotion, Dr Burgess said.

No corresponding figures are available for Dunedin Hospital as no similar study has been done there.

Most of the cost estimated by Dr Burgess was for treatment, almost $500,000, with a further $50,000 added for transport costs.

The majority of patients were transferred from Lakes District Hospital to Invercargill at a cost of almost $470 a trip, but 13 patients were brought by helicopter at a cost of more than $6200 a trip, more if a nurse was required.

Dr Burgess said it was difficult to say if ski and snowboard- related injuries were on the increase because of the lack of previous data.

Injury prevention measures might help reduce the incidence of such injuries and the ACC had posters reminding skiers and snowboarders of risks and giving advice on codes of conduct on skifields. In 2007 ACC accepted claims for 11,633 snow sports injuries at a cost of about $12 million.

Dr Burgess used caseweights to estimate the cost of treatment - these are units to measure how much money, staffing and time in hospital each operation needs.

The more complicated the surgery is, the more caseweights are allocated.

One caseweight is equal to about $4000.

elspeth.mclean@odt.co.nz

 

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