Alcohol Screening and Brief Counseling Are Cost-Saving

Prioritizing delivery of effective preventive services is important when resources, such as time and money, are limited. Although the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends alcohol screening and brief counseling in primary care, they often are not done. To determine the relative merits of alcohol screening and brief counseling compared with other preventive services, researchers performed a systematic review of randomized trials and cost-effectiveness studies and developed a cost-utility model based on those data.

During the lifetime of a cohort of 4 million people, and taking patient nonadherence into account, screening was estimated to save 176,000 quality-adjusted life years. The savings resulted largely from preventing consequenc…