August 29, 2010 in City

Libby’s asbestos clinic feels strain of success

More staffing sought as patients gain Medicare eligibility

• Print
• Email
• Share

Associated Press photo

Red Busby voices his concern over the lack of doctors to help screen and treat asbestos victims, during a meeting Monday with Sen. Max Baucus and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in Libby, Mont.
(Full-size photo)

LIBBY, Mont. – It could have been the years he spent breathing the toxic fibers on the job as a railroad foreman, or it could have come from cutting firewood along Rainey Creek. Red Busby isn’t exactly sure how he got asbestos-related disease; he just wants to make sure it doesn’t turn into something worse.

So the 62-year-old longtime Libby resident has regular screenings to warn against the onset of lung cancer or mesothelioma. The problem is, so do thousands of others in this community.

The number of new patients is growing every month and could increase at an even faster rate because of a recent expansion of Medicare coverage included in the new health care reform law specifically to include Libby’s victims of asbestos-related disease.

The increased demand has strained the limited resources of the clinic that specializes in caring for the asbestos victims of Libby. Screenings that used to take place every six months started being scheduled once a year. Now, a year and a half will have passed before Busby’s next checkup in November, he said.

“If I have to wait a year and a half, how big is that tumor going to grow within that time and how much harder is it going to be to get rid of?” Busby said. “If we’ve got all this money coming into this community that the government’s appropriated, well, why not go full-bore on the patients and the health care that’s needed? Everybody’s talking about the health care, well, why do we only have one doctor?”

The Center for Asbestos Related Disease specializes in health services for victims of the particular kind of asbestos that was pumped out for years by the vermiculite mine north of town. The clinic has one full-time doctor, about a dozen staff members and recently completed a $1 million expansion.

But more help is urgently needed to keep up with the growing demand, said Dr. Brad Black, the clinic’s physician.

“With the current staff, it’s a problem,” Black said. “There are certain people that are at much higher risk for lung cancer and other things, complications from the disease, and it behooves us to have regular follow-ups in those higher-risk patients. And it’s hard to do now.”

Asbestos pollution from the vermiculite mine, shut down in 1990, has made this the nation’s deadliest Superfund site, and last year federal officials declared a first-ever health emergency for the entire town.

Dust from the W.R. Grace mine has been blamed in the deaths of more than 400 people, and asbestos scarring is in the lungs of potentially thousands more.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Max Baucus were in Libby last week to tout the Medicare expansion to Libby victims, who before had to depend on a W.R. Grace company plan to cover their costs for asbestos-related health care.

Sebelius and Baucus heard from Busby and others grateful for the coverage but who also wanted solutions to problems like the clinic’s staffing shortage.

“I hear you,” Sebelius told him. An aide then promised to work with the clinic, which is advertising for a doctor who specializes in pulmonary or occupational medicine.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

No comments on this story so far. Add yours!