The costs of the treatment of cancer continues to increase alarmingly. However, oncologists and other healthcare professionals involved in the management and care of patients with cancer have opportunities to cut costs without risk to patients. This is the conclusion of an article published in in the February 14, 2014 issue of The Lancet Oncology.
In the article, experts from Johns Hopkins identify three major sources of high cancer costs and argue that cancer doctors can likely reduce them without harm to patients. The cost-cutting proposals call for changes in using expensive – routine – tests and treatments with marginal value in clinical practice involved in end-of-life care, medical imaging and drug pricing.
…we cannot continue to accept novel therapeutics with very small benefits for exorbitant prices. Patients, payers, and pharmaceutical communities should be constructively engaged to communicate medically and economically possible goals, and eventually, to reduce use and costs…
“We need to find the best ways to manage costs effectively while maintaining the same, if not better, quality of life among our patients,” says Thomas Smith, MD., The Harry J. Duffey Family Professor of Palliative Medicine and professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins.
Smith and co-author Ronan Kelly, MD., say that rising numbers of new cancer cases among an aging population are inflating total cancer costs, projected to increase by nearly 40% in 2020, and that changing practice patterns should be a priority among oncologists to achieve affordable costs. “Oncology professional societies, such as the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), are beginning to guide oncologists on cost-saving opportunities, but change in routine clinical practice is happening slowly,”Kelly, an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, said.
Caring for patients
In their article in The Lancet Oncology, Smith and Kelly say the biggest opportunities for safe and ethical cost-cutting solutions rest in caring for patients with metastatic cancer, not on new surgical or radiation treatments, clinical trials, curative care or pediatric care.
For example, the authors suggest that improving end-of-life care with better decision-making and planning could reap large cost savings by reducing hospitalizations in the last month of life. They note that 25% of total Medicare costs are spent in the last year of life; 40% of which is spent in the last month of life.
Medicare data
“Most people prefer to spend their last days of life at home with family and friends rather than in a hospital, but we still see high rates of hospital utilization in the last month of life,” says Smith. Medicare data show that 60% of poor-prognosis cancer patients are admitted to a hospital in the last month of life, and 30% die there.
The Hopkins team says studies show that hospice care improves symptoms, helps caregivers and costs less, with equal or better survival for patients, yet only half of cancer patients use hospice in their last month of life. The team recommend that patients with poor prognoses have better and earlier discussions with their oncologists about chemotherapy use at the end of life, as well as transitions to hospice. Decision aids spanning these topics have been developed by Smith and colleagues and are endorsed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
Unnecessary test
Unneeded and expensive imaging poses another opportunity to limit costs of care, Smith and Kelly say. PET and other scans, for example, are often used to detect cancer recurrence in patients after initial treatments, but studies show that cure rates are just as good when recurrences are found through other examinations. “The oncology community needs to have a greater responsibility in evaluating expensive tests, and limit their use to situations where there is strong evidence for benefit,” Kelly said.
Cost of drugs
Finally, the authors suggest that reducing prices of new cancer drugs could help contain cancer costs. “There are drugs that cost tens of thousands of dollars with an unbalanced relationship between cost and benefit,” says Smith. “We need to determine appropriate prices for drugs and inform patients about their costs of care.”
One approach, the researchers say, could be to price drugs according to how well they prolong life. “We need to include patients, pharmaceutical companies and legislators in our efforts to contain cancer care costs, so that we can afford to provide innovative, quality care to future generations,” Smith noted.
For more information:
[1]Kelly RJ, Smith TJ. Delivering maximum clinical benefit at an affordable price: engaging stakeholders in cancer care. Lancet Oncol. 2014 Feb 13. pii: S1470-2045(13)70578-3. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(13)70578-3.[Article][PubMed]
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