Obesity in adults has become a massive crisis in America as one in every three adults is categorized in that group. The 42.4 percent of people who struggle with obesity today experience many obstacles that affect their everyday lives. Unfortunately, this can lead to a plethora of health problems and daily struggles. We see this in the case of brain cancer patient Laura Baker from Santa Barbara, California. When she started experiencing a concerning amount of symptoms in 2019, she became a candidate for a CT scan. Unfortunately, due to Baker’s size, she could not find a scanner equipped to help her.
Baker suffered from two disorders that caused extreme swelling in various parts of her body. Therefore, she hoped to obtain access to a portable scanner that would allow for her frame. Unfortunately, the current healthcare system failed Baker, as she passed nine months later from her diagnosis. Access to a scanner could have prolonged the life of the 58-year-old beloved wife and mother.
Baker is not the only one who has experienced an indignity like this due to their size. Every patient deserves access to equal medical opportunities, whether there is an inability to travel to a medical facility or a lack of accommodating equipment. Additionally, deeper health problems have a higher chance of going undiagnosed when doctors fail to look past weight as the most significant obstacle. Offering our clients obesity coding tools to provide their patients with the highest quality of care is crucial to our values as a business. Accurate coding benefits an organization by ensuring the best care and overall supports legitimacy. More importantly, as a health care community, we have to tackle this nationwide problem of obesity.
