Francesco Moscone (2023).
Does Switching from Tobacco to Reduced-Risk Products Free up Hospital Resources?. Available at bura.brunel.ac.uk.
Abstract
Promoting a shift from smoking to Reduced Risk Products (RRPs) has the potential to ease the burden on healthcare resources, particularly health expenditure, if empirical evidence shows that RRPs are an effective smoking cessation tool or can help mitigate the risk of disease. Freeing up hospital beds and other resources may help hospital managers address other pressing health issues. However, there is notable variation in needs (e.g., mortality and diseases associated to smoking) and provision of healthcare services (e.g., hospital admissions and costs associated to smoking) across different regions. In this paper, we will investigate such heterogeneity with the aim to understand the different health impact across the English territory of converting from smoking to RRPs, ultimately assessing the potential savings for the NHS, and hence contributing to the goal for England to become smoke-free. We will review the state of the art of the literature on the relative risks of RRPs and carry an exploratory analysis to look at different sources of variations across regions, offering valuable policy insights to motivate hopefully further research.
