Doctors and health workers should be paid by results in helping drug users beat their addiction, according to a shock report out today.
The Centre for Policy Studies claims the present approach has proved to be nothing but a costly failure.
In its report called Breaking The Habit, the right-wing think-tank points out there are as many addicts today as there were six years ago.
Advertisement >>
And author Kathy Gyngell says the Government should urge medics to move away from simply prescribing methadone to addicts and instead refer them to rehab units.
She says the policy of prescribing methadone – a heroin substitute used to treat addicts – has been extremely expensive and has failed to cut the rising number of drug-related deaths.
Her report recommends a system of paying organisations, doctors, pharmacists and drug workers for their success rate in getting addicts off drugs.
She adds: “This approach would also be consistent with the Prime Minister’s vision for a Big Society.
“It would involve a real transfer of power from large distant organisations to small innovative providers.”
The report says looking after the country’s drug addicts costs taxpayers £3.6billion every year. Almost half of that is made up of state benefits paid to drug users.
It costs £730million to prescribe methadone to recovering addicts and a further £1.2billion is spent looking after their children.
Yet less than four per cent of England’s estimated 320,000 drug addicts manage to stay clean after treatment, says the CPS.
Government sources said ministers would be studying the report.
But a source close to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley warned that providing a host of new drug treatment centres would be “extremely costly” at a time when Whitehall departments were making cuts.
0 comments:
Post a Comment