DAK report Obesity: 2 million fewer obese people thanks to new care
09.11.2016 10:10
DAK-Gesundheit calls for an improved therapy and treatment program for obesity. A new, future-oriented care concept could reduce the number of obese people nationwide by more than two million people within ten years. In the long term, hospital costs could also be reduced by more than a billion euros. This emerges from the new DAK Obesity Care Report, which the IGES Institute prepared for the health insurance company.
16 million people in Germany are obese. One in four adults between the ages of 18 and 79 is obese - and the trend is rising. Those affected are so overweight that they are chronically ill. The proportion of patients with extreme obesity (BMI over 40) more than doubled between 1999 and 2013. According to studies, obesity is a trigger for more than 60 comorbidities, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and depression. At DAK-Gesundheit, the number of gastric operations on obese people has tripled in the past ten years.
Based on the new IGES study, DAK-Gesundheit is proposing a future-oriented care concept for obesity that would reach significantly more people affected. In the first step, 15 percent of obese people could benefit per year, whereas so far only six percent have been achieved. The result, according to projections: ten years after the change, two million people would be less obese than under current care. After 20 years, the number of those affected would decrease by another million. The number of deaths caused by obesity could also be significantly reduced in the long term.
DAK-Gesundheit's new care concept focuses on addressing those affected as early as possible and optimizing nutritional therapy. All patients with a BMI of over 30 are required to undergo an initial examination by a doctor qualified in nutritional medicine. The doctor could then accompany the optimized nutritional therapy as part of a basic therapy: In addition to the initial medical consultation, the concept includes three follow-up appointments - one appointment per quarter - as well as six appointments with a nutritionist. Contents include individual nutritional recommendations and concrete target agreements.
An important prerequisite for better care for people with obesity is the recognition of obesity as a chronic disease requiring treatment as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the establishment of appropriately qualified care structures in Germany.
According to the health insurance company, the DAK Obesity Care Report uses a methodology that is new in Germany. It was originally developed by the WHO for planning and setting priorities in the healthcare system: complex care tasks are analyzed on the basis of internationally available scientific findings to determine whether the means used achieve the optimum for the patients or whether redistribution of resources results in more health can be achieved.
Image: Nathalie Wittpohl/DAK-Gesundheit