Hospitals are starting to decommission their stop smoking services as a result of budget uncertainty, according to new data published by ASH. Services have already been decommissioned in six acute and two mental health trusts across three integrated care boards (ICBs) – the organisations responsible for planning local health services – the charity states.
The NHS has been rolling out dedicated stop smoking support for hospital patients and pregnant women since 2019, supporting more than 160,000 people in the last year alone and delivering ‘significant’ results, says ASH. However, the survey – conducted in partnership with Cancer Research UK – shows cuts ‘abandoning’ vulnerable patients, the charity warns. More than 80 per cent of these ‘vital, lifesaving’ programmes are now facing uncertain futures as a result of budget uncertainty, it adds.
Representatives from a range of medical organisations including the royal colleges of physicians, psychiatrists and nursing as well as the BMA have written in the BMJ that dismantling the services will reverse ‘hard-won’ progress and derail the government’s ambition to shift the NHS to a prevention model. The recent ten-year NHS plan (https://www.drinkanddrugsnews.com/campaigners-criticise-nhs-plans-lack-of-focus-on-alcohol/) included a commitment to embed opt-out stop smoking interventions into all hospital care in England.
‘If these services are lost, it will set the NHS prevention agenda back five years and result in tens of thousands of vulnerable patients being abandoned to a deadly addiction,’ the BMJ article states. ASH is calling on the government to ensure protected, long-term funding for NHS tobacco dependence services, as well as ‘clear accountability’ to make sure ICBs deliver them.
The most recent ONS figures showed that the proportion of current smokers had fallen to its lowest level, at around 12 per cent of the adult population (https://www.drinkanddrugsnews.com/proportion-of-current-smokers-falls-to-lowest-ever-level/) – down from more than 80 per cent of men and 40 per cent of women when the NHS was launched in 1948. However, smoking is still estimated to cost the NHS around £1.8bn a year, with the health harms increasingly concentrated in the most disadvantaged populations. The government’s tobacco and vapes bill aims to create a ‘smokefree generation’ by phasing out the legal sale of tobacco products to anyone currently aged 15 or younger (https://www.drinkanddrugsnews.com/tobacco-and-vapes-bill-introduced-to-parliament/).
‘Tobacco treatment in the NHS is one of the rare interventions that saves lives, cuts costs, and reduces inequalities – yet it’s under threat just at the point when the NHS wants to “shift to prevention”,’ said ASH chief executive Hazel Cheeseman. ‘We’ve made real progress, but without sustained funding and leadership we risk turning a public health success story into a missed opportunity. Strategic sanity demands we protect what works.’
BMJ article at https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1730