No snow: Barton ER visits on the rise

Publisher’s note: This is one of a series of blurbs about how the lack of winter is impacting businesses in the Lake Tahoe Basin. If you have an idea, please email it to info@LakeTahoeNews.net.

One of the businesses that benefits from a bad snow year is a hospital in a ski town. That is because people tend to hurt themselves more when the snowpack is hard or thin and when there are more people on fewer runs.

That’s the case at Barton Memorial Hospital. Emergency room visits were up 9 percent in December compared to December 2012. The snowpack in December 2012 was great – even above normal. Not so a month ago.

“Injury patterns are unchanged and, overall, the ski clinics are unchanged from previous years,” Warren Withers, medical director of Barton’s emergency department, told Lake Tahoe News.

Barton runs the medical clinics at Heavenly, Sierra and Kirkwood ski areas.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report