Posted on: Sunday, November 7, 2004
Many airports able to tend to ailing travelers
By Gary Stoller
USA Today
Business travelers stricken by indigestion or an ankle sprain may decide to tough it out until arriving home before tending to it. In many instances, they don't need to.
At least 11 major U.S. airports have medical offices accessible to travelers, a USA TODAY survey shows. They range from one-person emergency care facilities to multiservice operations with 60 staffers.
And the medical personnel who staff them say they see an array of travelers' maladies — everything from heart attacks to cuts and scrapes. They also provide non-emergency services such as giving shots and drawing blood.
Most have a doctor on duty and are equipped with an X-ray machine. Three — in Los Angeles, New York and Honolulu — never close.
Cheryl Radachowsky, a financial manager from Danbury, Conn., found how convenient they can be.
She learned the evening before a planned trip from Boston to Chicago that she needed blood tests the following morning.
"The medical facility at O'Hare airport was able to draw blood, send it out to the lab and fax results to my doctor," Radachowsky said.
Jose Martinez, 42, of Medellin, Colombia, became ill on a long trip to Asia and North America, and last week found his way to the medical center at Los Angeles International Airport. The largest of its kind, it has an eight-bed emergency area and handles about 48,000 patients each year, says director John Hirshleifer, a physician. The three-floor facility is owned by nearby Centinela Hospital.
The medical office at New York's John F. Kennedy International is the second largest and has about 25 examining rooms. Affiliated with Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, it's equipped with a sonogram that can detect blood clots from sitting on a long flight.
Airline travelers most commonly complain about nausea, vomiting, chest pain or injuries suffered while falling or carrying luggage, says Steven Garner, the doctor who runs the JFK facility. Travelers also come to him for medicine that they forgot to pack, he says.
Once, Garner says, he examined a traveler who had swallowed currency in an attempt to "launder" money from a drug deal. Another time, a traveler brought him a cat left unconscious by a hotel fire. "The money didn't come out looking laundered," Garner says, "and I tried, but the cat didn't make it."
Airport medical personnel say, though, they have saved the lives of numerous travelers. At JFK, for example, Garner says his staff went to the tarmac to resuscitate an arriving South American ambassador who had had a heart attack.
Travelers represent only a small percentage of many airport medical offices' business. Debra Carpenter, the nurse program manager at Denver International's medical center, says most patients are airport employees and only about 7 percent are travelers. At San Francisco International Airport's medical office, about 30 percent of patients are travelers, says Carol Schjaerve, the nurse manager of the facility.
At San Francisco International, the medical clinic plans to unveil in January a "Virtual Nurse" program that for a fee will advise travelers about health concerns at a particular destination.
