Alcohol hospital admissions 19% higher than a decade ago

The number of admissions is 6% higher than 2017/18 and 19% higher than a decade ago, according to the Statistics on Alcohol, England 2020.

Alcohol-related admissions accounted for 2% of overall hospital admissions, which is the same rate as 2017/18. Men accounted for 62% of alcohol admissions, while 40% of patients were aged between 45 and 64.

These figures are based on the narrow measure¹ where an alcohol-related disease, injury or condition was the primary reason for a hospital admission or there was an alcohol-related external cause.

A broader measure that looks at a range of other conditions that could be caused by alcohol shows 1.3 million admissions in 2018/19, this is an 8% increase on 2017/18 and represents 7% of all hospital admissions.

This report also presents a range of information on alcohol use and misuse by adults and children drawn together from a variety of sources.

Other figures included in the report show:

• There were 5,698 deaths specifically attributed to alcohol² in 2018, this is 2% fewer than in 2017
• 77% of alcohol related deaths happened in people aged 40 to 69
• 38% of men and 19% of women aged 55 to 64 usually drank over 14 units of alcohol in a week³
• The average household spent £8.70 per week on alcohol in 2017/18⁴
• People aged 65 to 74 had the highest average weekly alcohol spend of £10.60 a week⁴.

This report contains newly published data from the Public Health England Local Alcohol Profiles for England, which uses data from NHS Digital’s Hospital Episode Statistics.

You can read the full report from NHS Digital by clicking here.

This story contains information from NHS Digital, licenced under the current version of the Open Government Licence.