Alcohol and Healthcare costs

I’ve touched on this subject in several posts, but the problem is so important it needs greater understanding. In all the healthcare debates I’ve witnessed on the news channels in the last 10 years, the effect of alcohol abuse and alcoholism on healthcare hasn’t been highlighted. As we look for ways to lower healthcare costs, it makes sense that we’d concentrate on one of the main causes of high healthcare costs – alcohol abuse and other drug addiction. When I talk with nurses who work in emergency rooms, one of the main causes of presenting conditions that require medical attention in emergency rooms has to do with alcohol intoxication or some other drug related occurrence. These healthcare costs can be prevented.

Alcohol and healthcare costs are related to the problem of applying symptomatic solutions to symptomatic problems rather than applying fundamental solutions to fundamental problems. Often, in ER rooms, nurses and doctors deal with the symptoms of alcoholism. The fundamental problem, alcoholism, is not treated. ERs aren’t set up to treat alcoholism, and even if the hospital has case workers the case workers don’t always refer the patient to treatment, and when they do the person has no insurance and can’t pay for treatment. The patient might be referred to state funded facilities, but then it’s up to the patient to follow through, plus, the quality of treatment is hit and miss.

What’s needed are better treatment offerings, better recognition of the signs and symptoms of alcoholism and drug addiction, and a concerted medical effort, including the doctor, to convey the serious medical condition of addiction so that the patient understands fully what they are suffering from a chronic brain disease. If any other disease affected society like alcoholism and other drug addictions, and created such astounding healthcare costs, we’d do all we can do to deal with the disease, yet there’s still a lack of treatment options for alcoholics and a lack of medical attention paid to the disease of addiction.

Again, these costs are preventable. Below are some statistics to ponder:

• Twenty-five to forty percent of all patients in U.S. general hospital beds (not in maternity or intensive care) are being treated for complications of alcohol-related problems. ¹
• Annual health care expenditures for alcohol-related problems amount to $22.5 billion. The total cost of alcohol problems is $175.9 billion a year (compared to $114.2 billion for other drug problems and $137 billion for smoking).²

• In comparison to moderate and non-drinkers, individuals with a history of heavy drinking have higher health care costs. ³

• Untreated alcohol problems waste an estimated $184.6 billion dollars per year in health care, business and criminal justice costs, and cause more than 100,000 deaths. ⁴

• Health care costs related to alcohol abuse are not limited to the user. Children of alcoholics who are admitted to the hospital average 62 percent more hospital days and 29 percent longer stays. ⁵

• Alcohol use by underage drinkers results in $3.7 billion a year in medical care costs due to traffic crashes, violent crime, suicide attempts and other related consequences. The total annual cost of alcohol use by underage youth is $52.8 billion. ⁶

• Alcohol-related car crashes are the number one killer of teens. Alcohol use is also associated with homicides, suicides, and drownings-the next three leading causes of death among youth. ⁷

• Alcohol is the drug most frequently used by 12 to 17 year-olds-and the one that causes the most negative health consequences. More than 4 million adolescents under the legal drinking age consume alcohol in any given month. ⁸

• For an estimate of the costs that alcohol problems may be causing your workplace, and suggestions on what a company can do to identify and treat costly alcohol problems, go to the Alcohol Cost Calculator: http://www.alcoholcostcalculator.org. ⁹