The Cost of Diabetes

By Dr. Oscar Jordan
Chairman, Barbados Diabetes Foundation

Chronic disease accounts for a disproportionate amount of government expenditure on health. Among the chronic diseases diabetes stands as the main bugbear.

Costs related to diabetes are classified as either direct or indirect. Direct costs are those directly related to the cost of managing the disease i.e. hospitalization costs, laboratory costs, fees for doctors, nurses, nutritionists, physiotherapists and other professional fees, cost of medication etc.

Indirect costs relate to time off work due to illness with obvious implications for sufferers, their families, their work places, insurance companies etc. Then there are the hidden costs which are impossible to quantify. These include the psychological burden to patients and their families as patients transition from providers to dependants because of some incapacitating diabetic complication.

In Barbados much of the direct cost, at least for patients in hospital, are borne by the Government. Only one definitive study has been done, to the best of my knowledge, to measure the impact of hospital costs for patients who are treated as in­-patients or out-patients at Queen Elizabeth Hospital or at the various polyclinics.

That study, carried out by Belle and his colleagues, suggests that as much as 15% of the total hospital budget was spent on diabetes-related conditions, in the year of the study, or approximately 18 million dollars. This figure does not include the costs of care conducted at private physicians’ offices or the associated or indirect costs for those patients.