I have an idea how to save billions of dollars in healthcare costs. Start serving alcohol to selected patients while they are being treated in the hospital. I am being absolutely serious. Every day I am seeing patients developing complications from alcohol withdrawal. Usually, the patient is admitted for a scheduled or an urgent surgery. Many patients tend to understate their level of drinking, and on a day 2 – 3 after the admission they go into an alcohol withdrawal. Alcohol withdrawal is not a mere inconvenience. It could be quite severe. Many patients end up being admitted to an Intensive Care Unit. Some patients could even have seizures. Going into an alcohol withdrawal will significantly prolong the hospitalization and will increase the cost tremendously. I figured, that if I am taking care of at least one patient a day, on a national level it will add up to billions of dollars.

You might ask: “So, now we are going to have drunk patients in the hospital?” Well, yes. For many patients who drink alcohol on a daily basis, this becomes a “requirement” for a normal functioning. Some people could even be productive while being…you guessed it – drunk. Alcohol withdrawal, in contrast, could be a severe or even lethal condition. I saw people trying to jump out of the window while going through Delirium Tremens (DT). It is not unusual to require five or six people to hold a patient in DTs down while a sedating medication is being administered. Sometimes, despite an industrial dose of sedatives, we have to put the patient on a ventilator and administer sedation via a continuous infusion. So, to answer your question, I would rather have a “drunk” patient than a patient going through DTs.

Not all the patients should be offered alcohol while in the hospital. It should only be given by a physician order, just like any other medicine. Careful screening and thorough examination will be performed by an admitting physician before the “need” for alcohol is determined.

The concept of “prescribing” alcohol in the hospital is not new. In some places it is still being done. I once asked an older Dietitian about it. The answer that I got was quite surprising. Apparently, we used to give patients alcohol, but stopped doing it. Guess what was the reason? Not what you might think…we just didn’t have a good variety of beverages to suite every taste.