Medical and Health Benefits
United Kingdom prevalence data indicates that approximately 1 in 4 adults are now obese. With no intervention, obese patients will continue to gain weight thus increasing the risks of obesity related disease. The obese population use more NHS resources than their normal weight counterparts.
Counterweight aims to achieve and maintain medically valuable weight loss 5-10% (5-10kg). This results in multiple medical and health benefits including improvements in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and reduces the rate of progression to diabetes by up to 58%.
In the pilot phase, 1/3 of all patients enrolled and followed up in the Counterweight Programme maintained ≥5% loss at 12 and 24 months. Obesity-related CVD risk factors improved in the cohort as well.
Counterweight's Impact on Prescribing Costs
By applying the mean change in BMI observed, to the costs of prescribing medications at varying BMI levels, expected savings were estimated as follows
- 6.3% of prescribing costs for all patients
- 8% of the programme cost offset in year 1, increasing to 22% when attendance and follow-up is optimal
Link to relevant publication
Longer Term Cost Effectiveness
Using a model originally developed to provide input to the NICE guideline on obesity, long term cost effectiveness of Counterweight was assessed.
- Under ‘best case scenario’ where weight lost is maintained over a patient’s lifetime, Counterweight was found to be cheaper and more effective than providing no weight management intervention.
- Under ‘worst case scenario’ the cost per QALY was estimated to be around £750. This is well within the UK cut-off for cost effectiveness, currently considered in the region of £20,000-£30,000/QALY.
Link to relevant publication