Drug treatment expenditure: a methodological overview

Lisbon October 2017

Series type: Insights

Summary

It is estimated that over 1 million people receive treatment for drug-related problems in the European Union every year. With shrinking public budgets, increasing pressure on health systems, changes in the drugs used and the need to provide on-going care to chronic cases, what is the real cost of drug treatment in Europe? In collaboration with experts from around the globe, the EMCDDA has compiled this analytical report, the first of its kind, to present the current practices used for estimating drug treatment costs in order to help fill the knowledge gap.

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Foreword
Executive summary
Ackowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: A methodology for estimating health expenditure on drug treatment: the Australian experience
Chapter 2: Estimating labelled public expenditure on drug treatment in Croatia
Chapter 3: Expenditure on drug treatment in the Czech Republic
Chapter 4: Bottom-up versus top-down methods of cost estimation: the case of medical drug treatment and rehabilitation in Hungary
Chapter 5: A methodological inventory for the assessment of selected, unlabelled direct public expenditure in the field of drug demand reduction
Chapter 6: Estimating the costs of treating drug-related health problems in the United Kingdom
Chapter 7: Public expenditure on drug treatment and associated comorbidities: a case study of Bergamo
Chapter 8: Public expenditure on opioid substitution treatment in Italy
Chapter 9: A methodology for an EU cross-country comparison? Public expenditure on drug treatment in hospitals
Chapter 10: The cost calculator: a tool for estimating public spending on drug treatment in England
Chapter 11: Empirical estimation of drug treatment costs in Portugal
Chapter 12: Estimating the costs of substitution therapy for heroin and opioid addiction in the United States: insights and challenges
Chapter 13: A cross-national comparison of public expenditures on drug treatment: context is key
Chapter 14: Social cost of illicit drugs in France: what’s new in estimating the value for lives lost and illness?
Chapter 15: Estimating drug treatment expenditure: discussion and concluding remarks