National
Crisis-Alcohol and Healthcare
- Twenty-five to forty percent of all patients in U.S. general
hospital beds (not in maternity or intensive care) are being
treated for complications of alcohol-related problems.
1
- Annual health care expenditures for alcohol-related problems
amount to $22.5 billion. The total cost of alcohol problems is
$175.9 billion a year (compared to $114.2 billion for other drug
problems and $137 billion for smoking).2
- In comparison to moderate and non-drinkers, individuals with a
history of heavy drinking have higher health care costs.
3
- Untreated alcohol problems waste an estimated $184.6 billion
dollars per year in health care, business and criminal justice
costs, and cause more than 100,000 deaths.
4
- Health care costs related to alcohol abuse are not limited to
the user. Children of alcoholics who are admitted to the hospital
average 62 percent more hospital days and 29 percent longer stays.
5
- Alcohol use by underage drinkers results in $3.7 billion a
year in medical care costs due to traffic crashes, violent crime,
suicide attempts and other related consequences. The total annual
cost of alcohol use by underage youth is $52.8 billion.
6
- Alcohol-related car crashes are the number one killer of
teens. Alcohol use is also associated with homicides, suicides,
and drownings—the next three leading causes of death among youth.
7
- Alcohol is the drug most frequently used by 12 to 17
year-olds—and the one that causes the most negative health
consequences. More than 4 million adolescents under the legal
drinking age consume alcohol in any given month.
8
Any Way You Look At It, Alcohol Costs
- The federal government estimates that, 7.4 percent of
full-time workers ages 18 to 49 – 6.5 million people have drinking
problems.
- Alcohol costs American business an estimated $134
billion in productivity losses, mostly due to missed
work: 65.3 percent of this cost was caused by alcohol-related
illness, 27.2 percent
due to premature death, and 7.5 percent to crime.
- People with alcoholism and problem drinkers are more likely
than other workers to have had three or more employers during the
last year; to have missed work more than two days in the past
month due to illness or injury; and to have skipped work more than
two days in the past month.
- People with alcoholism use twice as much sick leave as other
employees. They are five times more likely to file workmen's
compensation claims; and they are more likely to cause injuries to
themselves or others while on the job.
- Twenty percent of workers say they have been injured, have had
to cover for a coworker, or needed to work harder because of other
employees’ drinking.
- More than half of working family members of alcoholics report
that their own ability to function at work and at home was
negatively impacted by their family member’s drinking.
1 Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University,
The Cost of Substance Abuse to America's Health
Care System, Report 1: Medicaid Hospital Costs,
1994.
2
Economic
costs of substance abuse, 1995.
Dorothy P. Rice. Proceedings of the Association of American
Physicians 111(2): 119-125. 1999.
3 Hunkeler EM,
Hung, Yun-Yi, Rice DP, Weiser C and Hu, Teh-wei. Alcohol consumption
patterns and health care costs in an HMO.
Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
Vol 64, Issue 2, pp 181-190, October 2001.
4 Goplerud, E.,
Ensuring solutions to alcohol problems initiative,
George Washington University Medical Center. McGinnis, J.M. & Foege,
W.H. (1993). Actual causes of death in the United States. JAMA
. 270(18):2207-2212.
5
Children of Alcoholics
Foundation, Children of Alcoholics in
the Medicaid System: Hidden Problems, Hidden Costs, 1990
6 Costs of
underage drinking. David T. Levy, Ted R. Miller, and Kenya C. Cox.
U.S.
Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
Rockville MD. October 1999.
7
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention's
Discussion Paper on Preventing Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug
Problems, 1993.
8
See 2
9
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Drinking Doesn't Have To Occur On the Job to Cause Problems in
the Workplace
- Employees who drink heavily off the job are more likely to
experience hangovers that cause them to be absent, show up late or
leave early; to feel sick at work; to sleep on the job; to perform
poorly; or to argue with their coworkers.
- Sixty percent of alcohol-related job performance problems are
caused by people who are NOT alcoholics or problem drinkers; they
are employees who occasionally drink too much at lunch or the
night before.
- One study found that pilots were unable to perform adequately
on a flight simulator 8-14 hours after drinking heavily.
Alcoholism is a diagnosable disease like other chronic,
relapsing conditions such as asthma, diabetes and high blood
pressure.
All of these illnesses:
- Are genetic and behavioral in nature
- Are easily diagnosed
- Respond positively to both treatment and prevention
efforts.
- Have "like" symptom and relapse management
Workplace-Employee-Alcohol
Employee alcohol use causes a variety of problems. It reduces
productivity, impairs job performance, increases health care costs
and can threaten public safety. Because 85 percent of heavy drinkers
work, employers who aggressively address this problem can improve
their own company’s bottom line and their employees’ health. For
more information, see the Ensuring Solutions fact sheet Challenges
to Solving Alcohol Problems at Work.
Workplace Demographics Influence the Extent of Problem Drinking
- Drinking varies among occupations and gender, but
alcohol-related problems cut across the workforce just as they do
in the rest of American society.
- Heavy drinking is more likely to occur in male-dominated
workplaces such as construction and mining.
- In predominantly female occupations, both men and women are
less likely to drink than employees of both sexes in
male-dominated occupations.
- Workforces with a large number of young adults have much
greater rates of problem drinking than workforces that are older.
Problem drinking among younger workers is associated with
increased injury, absenteeism and productivity losses.
Sources: Mangione, TW, Howland, J & Lee, M.,
"New Perspectives for Worksite Alcohol Strategies: Results from a
Corporate Drinking Study,” December 1998.
The Washington Business Group on Health, “Proceedings from the
Employer Leadership Forum on Substance Abuse: An Exploratory
Conference,” November 1999.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute
on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “Alcohol and the Workplace,”
Alcohol Alert No. 44, July 1999.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration, "Substance Use, Dependence or
Abuse among Full-time Workers," The National Household Survey on
Drug Abuse, September 2002.
Al-Anon Family Groups, Inc., “1999 Al-Anon/Alateen Membership
Survey and Al-Anon Membership Assessment Results: Final Report,”
March 2000.
The Hazelden Foundation, "Workplace Recovery Benefits Survey,"
September 2002.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration, “The Costs and Effects of
Parity for Substance Abuse Insurance Benefits,” 1998.
December 2002
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