A new report published in the journal Diabetic Medicine has projected that the NHS’s annual spending on diabetes in the UK will increase from £9.8 billion to £16.9 billion over the next 25 years, a rise that means the NHS would be spending 17% of its entire budget on the condition.
The Impact Diabetes report1 also suggests that the cost of treating diabetes complications (including kidney failure, nerve damage, stroke, blindness and amputation) is expected to almost double from the current total of £7.7 billion to £13.5 billion by 2035/6.
Authored by the York Health Economic Consortium and developed in partnership between Diabetes UK, JDRF and Sanofi Diabetes, the report has highlighted the high percentage (79%) of NHS diabetes spending that goes on complications – many of which are preventable – and speculates that investing in the checks and services that help people manage the condition and therefore reduce risk of complications could actually be less expensive than the current approach.
The report quantifies the current costs of direct patient care for diabetes (which includes treatment, intervention and complications) and indirect costs of diabetes, such as those related to increased death and illness, work loss and the need for informal care, and also predicts the UK’s future costs of diabetes. According to the report, the total cost associated with diabetes in the UK currently stands at £23.7 billion and is predicted to rise to £39.8 billion by 2035/6.
Barbara Young, Chief Executive of Diabetes UK, said: “This report shows that without urgent action, the already huge sums of money being spent on treating diabetes will rise to unsustainable levels that threaten to bankrupt the NHS. 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. The failure to do more to prevent these complications is both a tragedy for the people involved and a damning indictment of the failure to implement the clear and recommended solutions. Unless the Government and the NHS start to show real leadership on this issue, this unfolding public health disaster will only get worse.”
