NHS should be more worried about medical negligence than drinking culture
The hidden problem with Bakewell’s programme is that it predicted 50,000 lives would be lost among oldie tipplers over 10 years, but they could all be saved by introducing a minimum unit price for alcohol.
It later transpired that the Sheffield University academics who provided this figure “miscalculated” — it should have read 11,000 lives lost, thus reducing the problem inflation by nearly 80% from utterly incredible, to merely highly implausible.
As I write, I’m looking at a new report from the charity 4Children. It warns of a “silent epidemic” of alcohol misuse, suggesting that 22% of children live with a hazardous drinker and 6% with a dependent drinker. What the headline reports of this fail to say is the figures are taken from the National Psychiatric Morbidity Survey from 2000 — 12 years ago!
When you ask why it is that this kind of problem inflation tactic is used, the answer isn’t immediately apparent until you look at the cost burden alcohol misuse allegedly causes the NHS.
The Royal College of Surgeons says that treating alcohol misuse costs about £3bn annually. But we know that the NHS Information Centre’s false counting methodology of ‘alcohol-attributable fractions’ inflates alcohol-related hospital admissions from around 200,000 a year to just over one million a year. The true cost is around £1.3bn annually.
The real ‘hidden problem’ that threatens the NHS is not caused by the drinking culture, but by the compensation culture. Recent research published by Professor Frank Furedi of the University of Kent reveals that in 2010/11 the NHS Litigation Authority, which itself costs £7m a year to run, paid out £911m in compensation claims, mostly for medical negligence.
The total value of claims stands at a staggering £16.8bn — almost 16% of the annual NHS budget. The value of claims has trebled in the past 10 years. If they treble over the next 10 years the NHS could be paying out £3bn a year with potential liabilities of £50bn.
So here’s the question I’d pose to all those health professionals who continue to scapegoat our industry: what represents the best use of your time? Is it engaging in a futile attempt to engineer a lifestyle revolution, in the forlorn hope of achieving your public health utopia, or sorting out the policies and practices that have left you vulnerable to lawyers?
