Factcheck: Is alcohol abuse costing the NHS £2.7 billion a year? | Full Fact

Is alcohol abuse costing the NHS £2.7 billion a year?

15 February, 2012 - 17:43 -- Jessica Moody

The Prime Minister will discuss today new measures to combat alcohol abuse in England. He wants to reduce the £2.7 billion the NHS spends annually tackling the problem. But is this figure accurate?

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“As figures today show the NHS is having to pick up an ever growing bill - £2.7 billion a year, including £1 billion on accident and emergency services alone”.

David Cameron,15 February 2012

The Prime Minister has pledged today to introduce measures to deal with what he calls “one of the scandals of our society”. Mr. Cameron lamented the rising cost of alcohol abuse to the NHS. In particular he commented on the expense of accident and emergency services being used to combat alcohol related problems - currently priced at £1 billion a year.

Full Fact checked the figures.

Analysis

The Prime Minister’s comments referred to statistics from a study by the Department of Health into the cost of alcohol harm to the NHS in England. The report shows that while the cost of alcohol abuse in 2003 was £1.7 billion, by the time the report was written in 2008 the price had risen to £2.7 billion per annum.

The latest NHS information centre study on alcohol statistics from May 2011 reiterates the figures from the report. Again, it claims the NHS is spending £2.7 billion combating alcohol abuse each year.

Both the Department of Health and the NHS report provide a breakdown of how the health service expenses are divided:

According to the figures, the NHS spends £645.7 million per year on accident and emergency visits and £372.4 million on ambulance services.

Mr. Cameron appears to have added these figures together to form his conclusion that £1 billion of the £2.7 billion spent annually on alcohol abuse is spent on the accident and emergency services.

It should however be noted that, despite being re-used by the NHS Information Centre, the figures still date back to 2008, and are estimates at best. They many or may not reflect the current costs faced by the NHS. 

Conclusion

The Prime Minister's claims about the NHS statistics on alcohol abuse are accurate.

Alcohol abuse, as Number 10 stated, costs the NHS £2.7 billion per year. In addition the cost of accident and emergency services, if we define these as accident and emergency visits and ambulance services combined, comprises a total cost of £1 billion.

As far as we can tell, both figures still date back to 2008 and should therefore be considered with this in mind.

UPDATE (17/02/2012)

Since our orignal article was released, Straight Stastics raised some concerns over the methodology behind the Prime Minister's figures.

Full Fact investigated the matter further and found that while the £2.7 billion cost that Number 10 used dated back to a DH report from 2008, Mr. Cameron's 200,000 hospital admissions related to alcohol abuse is based on figures from 2010.

Straight Statistics pointed out that there is a contradiction in using hospital admissions figures from 2010 but costs from 2008. Indeed if we are assuming these figures are comparable, the cost to the NHS of hospital admissions both partly and directly due to alcohol should be roughly £290 million rather than the £1.2 billion shown in the table below. 

 

The number of hospital admissions used to calculate the £2.7 billion back in 2008 remains somewhat unclear. Both the DH and the NHS were contacted in attempt to discover whether the £2.7 billion was based on admissions where the primary or secondary diagnoses were wholly or partially atributable to alcohol (802,066) or on admissions where only the primary diagnosis was wholly or partially atributable to alcohol (179,700). Neither of the sources were able to provide us with a definitive answer. 

While we know that the 200,000 figure for current hospital admissions related to alcohol is a measure of primary diagnoses only, without knowing which of the 2008 admissions figures the £2.7 billion is based on we are unable to say how accurate Mr. Cameron's cost estimate is.

Moreover, as the graph above shows, the cost of alcohol abuse to the NHS is based on many other factors, not simply hospital admissions. Until more research is carried out it remains very difficult to estimate the exact cost of alcohol abuse to the NHS in 2012.

Nevertheless, Mr. Cameron's use of figures from different time periods is concerning and puts a question mark over his £2.7 billion price tag for 2012.

Full Fact will be keeping an eye out for any more data which might shed light on the issue. 

via fullfact.org