Healthy lifestyles have the potential to reduce healthcare costs

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 disease

“According the NHI discussion paper released in August last year, lifestyle-related, or the so called “non-communicable”, diseases account for approximately 28% of the total healthcare spending in South Africa.

“If South Africans are motivated to take responsibility for their health and to make better lifestyle choices, there is potential to reduce healthcare spend 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 and “lifestyle related diseases” were defined as those influenced by high levels of stress, poor weight control, unhealthy diet, smoking and lack of exercise. 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.

Healthcare is moving away from merely the treatment of disease towards wellness and the prevention of disease. Medscheme has embarked on various initiatives in this regard. “People should be encouraged to improve their health and wellbeing by acting on relevant information and making the right choices. The benefits will be felt not only in terms of lowered healthcare costs, and lower medical scheme contribution increases but also on improvement in quality of life,” she concludes.