Hospital admissions linked to alcohol problems have reached a record high, prompting fresh concern about the harm being caused by binge drinking.
Hospitals in England admitted 1,173,386 patients for treatment for alcohol-related problems in 2010-11, NHS statistics show, up 9% on the 1,056,962 in 2009-10, the first time the figure topped 1 million. In 2002-03, there were 510,780 such admissions.
These are the drinking figures which don’t in fact show that the specific problem is to do with drinking, aren’t they?
I can never remember whether they’re measuring all admissions where someone has had a pint or they simply say that x % of all y type injuries must be drink related. And I’m almost certain that there’s been a change in what it is that they’re measuring in that decade.
In other words these statistics are toss.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Ben // Dec 10, 2011 at 10:50 am
You’re not wrong – this is a good deconstruction of last year’s figures
http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/drink-and-disease-how-figures-can-confuse
2 dearieme // Dec 10, 2011 at 10:55 am
“these statistics are toss”: be reasonable, why would they be different from most other statistics?
3 SimonB // Dec 10, 2011 at 3:10 pm
I was waiting for a post like this to pop up on the Moose but hearing this on the radio set off all the alarm bells.
The guy from whichever fake charity immediately settled on minimum pricing as the solution and it really was amazing how utterly joyless the guy sounded, wouldn’t surprise me if he’s never had a day of fun in his life.
4 PaulB // Dec 11, 2011 at 10:14 am
The comment from Andy Sutherland on the straightstatistics article Ben linked to says that the statistics have been compiled using the same method (retrospectively) back to 2002-3 but seems implicitly to confirm that they are estimated by “alcohol attributable fractions”.
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