The study shows that a structured approach, focused around individual patients and their drinking patterns, is much more effective. The study presents a robust attempt at calculating a financial cost benefit analysis for the health intervention. The conclusion that resource allocation to primary prevention produces major overall resource savings, particularly in secondary care, will be of great relevance to total healthcare purchasers or providers such as primary care trusts. The benefits are not restricted to the healthcare system. Accidents, injuries, and crime were all shown to decrease after the intervention, although some of the variables failed to reach statistical significance when taken individually.
Some questions arise from a lack of detail.
We do not know the take up rate of the intervention or the number of patients lost to follow up. There is no indication about whether intervention group patients visited their primary care physicians less, which would be an obvious benefit to those physicians delivering the intervention.