The total cost of COPD to the UK health care system in 1996 was estimated at £817 million. Secondary care management accounts for over half the total and in 2001 amounted to £587 million for the UK. Over the last decade, admissions to hospital have increased by 50%. In an average health district serving 250,000 people there will be 14,500 GP consultations every year.The average cost per patient per annum is £810.42, at least three times the cost of a patient with asthma. Of this figure, 54.3% is due to in-patient care, 18.6% for treatment, 16.4% for GP contact, 5.7% for A & E visits and 5% for tests. Not surprisingly, the cost per patient dramatically increases with disease severity from £150 per year with mild disease, to £308 with moderate disease and £1,307 with severe disease. A typical COPD patient consults 2.4 times per year, and has an estimated mean annual drug bill of £124. Oxygen therapy is an expensive part of treatment and the data suggest that oxygen is not being used most economically. About 30,000 patients with COPD receive oxygen therapy, and 23,000 of them use oxygen cylinders. The annual cost of regular use of oxygen by cylinder is £6,500 per
patient, whereas the running costs of an oxygen concentrator are only £900 per year.
Patients with severe COPD often experience exacerbations of their symptoms – which are a common reason for their being admitted to hospital. A survey in Merseyside calculated that 12.5% of all medical acute admissions were for exacerbations of COPD. In an average health district the annual inpatient bed days amount to 9,600, compared with 1,800 for asthma.The length of stay is notably longer than for asthma: 10 days for COPD compared with 3.6 days
for asthma.

COPD also causes considerable loss of time from work – 24 million days in 1994/5.The economic cost for that period amounted to £600 million in state benefits. Adding the value of lost work to employers brings the total economic cost to the nation to a staggering
£2.7 billion!