Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Sunday 27 November 2011

Questions of cost - eg diabetic complications

One question that makes me blench a little is "how much does it cost to treat an average person with diabetes for one year?" as I know I'm on to a loser there.

First of all it depends if they are using medication (which might be insulin, or tablets or both - but are we including tablets to treat blood pressure and blood fats as well as glucose) and they might be using glucose test strips too. They might be on a pump or using multiple daily injections and we've not even got on to the type of insulin they're using. Also cost to whom? Prescriptions for medications for diabetes are (or should be) free to the person who has diabetes, although other presriptions aren't. Costs do vary for different drugs though.

The cost of diabetes drugs can be found in Prescribing for Diabetes in England documents (you can just imagine how delighted I was to happen across these)...

...and TheyWorkForYou often has random costs illustrated with a table (it depends entirely on what question might have been asked in Parliament) but what of the costs of other interventions and hospital episodes?

Hospital Episode Statistics give a nice overview of the numbers of completed interventions but I don't think I've spotted much in the way of costs. The NHS IC have recently tweaked their portal (it's all frames, everything's the same URL, fetch the smelling salts!) as have the Office for National Statistics (they're very helpful on Twitter).

Where should I be looking?

UKSKEPTICS has suggested NHS reference costs, which looks promising to start with:

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