25 April 2012

Report Says NHS Wasting Money On Diabetes

A new report in the journal Diabetic Medicine has said the majority of NHS spending on diabetes is avoidable.

The report suggests that 80% of the NHS's £9.8bn annual UK diabetes bill goes on the cost of treating complications.

Much of this is preventable with health checks and better education experts have said; the Department of Health has said this is something it is working on.

The report also predicts that by 2035, diabetes will cost the NHS £16.8bn, 17% of its entire budget.

The study looked at annual direct patient care costs for both types of diabetes, with Type 2 at £8.8bn being far higher than that of Type 1 at £1bn.

Both Type 1 diabetes, which tends to appear in childhood, and Type 2 diabetes, often linked to diet, leads to problems controlling the amount of sugar in the blood.

Complications occur when people with diabetes sustain high levels of glucose over a long period. This can lead to increased chances of developing disease-related complications, such as kidney failure, nerve damage, damage to the retina, stroke and cardiovascular disease.

"The report shows that without urgent action, the already huge sums of money spent on treating diabetes will rise to unsustainable levels that threaten to bankrupt the NHS,” Baroness Barbara Young, from Diabetes UK - one of the charities involved in the Impact Diabetes report – said.

"If this rise in diabetes is allowed to continue, as is happening at the moment, it will simply be disastrous for the NHS and wreck NHS budgets. I think we have a car crash coming.

"But the most shocking part of this report is the finding that almost four-fifths of NHS diabetes spending goes on treating complications that in many cases could have been prevented.

"That's hugely wasteful - in human life, in the quality of human life, and in NHS budgets. We need to stop this now and make sure people get the right sort of care early on in their condition."

(H)