Total Pageviews

Tuesday 25 February 2014

NHS Diabetes Policy: The Human and Financial Costs

cc            Sir David Nicholson

Human Costs
The extent of the human costs of the NHS diabetes policy is tabulated in the following table extracted from:


Complication
Number of people with diabetes experiencing the complication
Angina
117,278
Myocardial Infarction
28,812
Heart Failure
81,452
Stroke
35,120
Major Amputation
3,319
Minor Amputation
5,869
RRT
15,415
Retinopathy Treatment
14,144
DKA
10,434
















Financial Costs
The extent of the financial costs of the NHS diabetes policy is extracted from:


Diabetes cost approximately £23.7bn in the UK in 2010/2011: £9.8bn in direct costs and £13.9bn in indirect costs. Direct costs include the costs of diagnosis and retinopathy screening, treatment and management and complications (the cost of complications was estimated at £7.7bn - .79% of direct costs). The indirect costs include mortality costs, productivity loss costs, and social costs for care. Diabetes currently accounts for 10% of the total health resource expenditure. 

Conclusions
“Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are prominent diseases in the UK and are a significant economic burden. … Complications related to the diseases account for a substantial proportion of the direct health costs. As prevalence increases, the cost of treating complications will grow if current care regimes are maintained”. [My bold]


John

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Should this not be offset by the earlier deaths caused by diabetes and therefore saving a small fortune in pensions and care of the elderly?

Andy12345

Lowcarb team member said...

Andy12345 said...
Should this not be offset by the earlier deaths caused by diabetes and therefore saving a small fortune in pensions and care of the elderly?

Could be why we are prescribed a low fat high carb diet Andy, short term it may be expensive but in the long term the saving on pensions, care and benefits will be more than adequate to cover the initial costs.

Cheers
Graham

Unknown said...

Sad but true. I've thought for some time that statins are the anti-pension drug.

Anonymous said...

It's a mad sad world