3:41 PM 7th November 2023
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Yorkshire’s Hidden Malnutrition Crisis Costs Local NHS £1 Billion, New Report Finds
Photo by Obi - @pixel8propix on Unsplash
A new report commissioned by Danone UK & Ireland and conducted by health policy research centre, Future Health has revealed that:
Yorkshire is one of England’s malnutrition hot spots. The West Yorkshire NHS integrated care board (ICB), which includes areas such as Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield, directs more than £1 billion a year towards treating and managing the condition.
While South Yorkshire ICB, covering Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham, spends between 21-27% of its annual budget on treating and managing people with malnutrition.
NHS hospitals in Yorkshire collectively spend at least 15% of their annual budgets managing malnourished patients, further straining already stretched local health services.
This high cost is driven by the prevalence of malnutrition in Yorkshire, which is one of the highest in the country. In West and South Yorkshire at least 6% of people are estimated to be malnourished, which is above the 5% national average in England.
Treating someone who is malnourished costs three times more than treating someone who is not malnourished, and it is estimated that £1 in every £5 of the NHS budget in England is spent on malnutrition.
Malnutrition leads to increased GP appointments; hospital admissions and extended hospital stays. In West Yorkshire ICB, 3.5% of hospital admissions each year are malnutrition related; malnutrition leads to more than 60 additional hospital bed days per 1,000 population in South Yorkshire ICB.
Across England 464,000 people are admitted to hospital annually, leading to 2.9 million extra days in hospital
. At the primary care level, 17.7% of all GP appointments (or 56.8 million) each year are malnutrition related.