Healthy lifestyles can reduce healthcare costs substantially

23 Feb 2012

The steep increases in medical scheme contributions announced by many medical schemes at the beginning of the year attracted harsh criticism from both medical scheme members and the National Department of Health. The prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) was considered to be such a critical global agenda point that the United Nations held a high-level meeting on NCDs in 2011 focusing on a global strategy thereof.

However, Dr Lungi Nyathi, executive manager for strategic development at Medscheme says that there is potential to substantially reduce healthcare costs by healthy living. "According the NHI discussion paper released in August last year, NCDs account for approximately 28% of the total healthcare spending in South Africa.

Lifestyle related diseases are increasing

"If South Africans are motivated to take responsibility for their health and to make better lifestyle choices, there is potential to reduce healthcare spending by over R30 billion every year. More worrying is that despite compelling medical evidence supporting the benefits of healthy lifestyle choices, the prevalence of lifestyle related diseases is increasing steadily," she says.

Statistics drawn from Medscheme's health profile database demonstrate that the prevalence of lifestyle disease has increased from an average of 11.6% in 2007 to 13.9% in 2011, an increase 19.8%.

The analysis is based on claims submitted to medical schemes administered by Medscheme. The diseases in the analysis included alcoholism, lung and cervical cancers, cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic renal failure, depressive disorders, hypertension, ischemic heart disease and vascular disease. Of these, hypertension had the highest prevalence (10,2%) followed by hyperlipidemia (3,8%) and diabetes mellitus type II (3,7%).

From a cost perspective, the worst offender is ischemic health disease which accounts for 2,7% of the total cost. This is followed by hypertension (2.4%), chronic renal failure (1.9%) and diabetes mellitus type II (1.5%). The rest contribute less than 1% each.