Public spending for illegal drug and alcohol treatment in hospitals: an EU cross-country comparison

Table 1 Hospital days and expenditures for illegal drug treatment (general, mental health and specialty hospitals), for 15 EU countries, 2010

Country^*	Public expenditure per hospital day (euros)	Hospital days for illegal drug treatment per 1,000 capita	Proportion of hospital days attributable to illegal drug treatment (%)	Illegal drug treatment expenditure by hospitals (million euros)	Illegal drug treatment expenditure by hospitals, per capita (euros)	Illegal drug treatment expenditure by hospitals, as percentage of GDP
Sweden	1532	9	0.88%	123	13.2	0.035%
Austria^†	507	15	0.62%	65	7.8	0.023%
Germany	391	16	0.72%	523	6.4	0.021%
Slovenia	432	7	0.59%	6	3.2	0.018%
Finland^†	428	6	0.28%	14	2.5	0.008%
Slovakia	165	11	0.75%	9	1.7	0.014%
Poland	167	9	0.70%	55	1.4	0.015%
Czech Republic	211	17	0.79%	37	3.5	0.025%
Portugal	1045	0.6^‡	0.11%	6	0.6	0.004%
Hungary	121	5	0.28%	6	0.6	0.006%
Latvia^†	140	3	0.24%	0.8	0.4	0.005%
Bulgaria	69	3	0.19%	2	0.2	0.004%
Lithuania	113	1	0.06%	0.4	0.1	0.001%
Romania	81	1	0.07%	2	0.1	0.002%
Cyprus^†	936	0.01^‡	0.002%	0.006	0.01	0.00003%
Mean ^k (SD)	423 (429)	7 (6)	0.42% (0.31%)	57 (133)	2.8 (3.7)	0.012% (0.01%)

^*The European countries are not classified in regions, because no global classification system is available for illegal drugs (contrary to studies on alcohol, which distinguish geographical areas by drinking traditions and patterns [44]). Drug-related research e.g., ([45, 46]) uses different types of classification according to the investigated type of drugs. Nevertheless, the conclusions for multiple countries are described by the UN geographical regions: Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe and Western Europe.
^†Contrary to the other countries, the live-born infants (Z38) of Austria, Cyprus, Latvia and Finland are not included in the total hospital days, and this could lead to an overestimation of the hospital expenditures.
^‡The data for Cyprus cover only public sector hospitals. Portugal covers all public inpatient institutions and only two private hospitals. Consequently, the hospital days for illegal drug treatment are underestimated, and this may affect the proportion of hospital days attributable to illegal drug treatment. Therefore, the hospital days and public expenditures for illegal drug treatment in Cyprus and Portugal will not be further analyzed.

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