‘Frightening’ diabetes costs highlighted
NEW research showing that annual diabetesrelated hospital admission costs in OtagoSouthland amounted to $41 million also highlights the ‘‘frightening’’ national costs, researchers say.
‘‘Unless we start taking it seriously as a society, it will get worse in terms of the health sector and also for individuals and families,’’ Associate Prof Kirsten Coppell warned about the costs yesterday.
‘‘The epidemic is not going away.
‘‘We really do need to focus back on diabetes,’’ she said.
Prof Coppell said the actual hospital admission costs of diabetes to the Southern DHB far exceeded the estimated
$41 million in 201617, the financial year of the study.
The research had considered only inpatient costs at two hospitals and the costs would be far greater if they included pharmaceuticals, primary care consultations, outpatient appointments, retinal screening and home renal dialysis.
And if the OtagoSouthland figures were extrapolated on a population basis nationally, the amount already being spent on treating diabetes ‘‘would be frightening’’, Prof Coppell, a researcher in the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre, said.
A high proportion of the admission costs at the two facilities, Dunedin and Southland Hospitals, were attributed to cardiovascular disease, eye disease and musculoskeletal system disease, many of which were related to diabetes. Diabetes was not necessarily coded as the main reason for admission to hospital in the research, published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal.
There were 6994 separate diabetesrelated hospital admissions, costing a total of $40,986,618 million in the two southern hospitals.
The overall costs and prevalence of diabetes in New Zealand continued to rise.
She also urged the implementation of interventions that targeted preventable diabetesrelated hospital admissions, and diabetes prevention intervention programmes.
Another research paper published in today’s NZMJ, and also undertaken by Prof Coppell and colleagues from the university and Diabetes New Zealand, shows the costeffectiveness of a weightloss intervention programme aimed at preventing and delaying progression to type 2 diabetes in people with prediabetes, and delivered by primary care nurses working in general practice.
Health economist Dr Trudy Sullivan, of the Otago department of preventive and social medicine, said the review of the intervention package piloted in Hawke’s Bay showed that a structured prediabetes prevention programme could potentially reduce future health costs.