Metastatic Cancer Patients Could See Cheaper Treatment Without Harm

The amount of money that is spent on cancer patients during their last year of life is startling, and some believe it is unnecessary. A new Johns Hopkins University study cites the potential for reducing costs of cancer treatment for end-of-life care without harming patients.

Thomas Smith, M.D., and Ronan Kelly, M.D., documented cancer costs among patients in their last year as well as last few months of life. They found that 25 percent of total Medicare costs are spent in the last year of life and a staggering 40 percent are spent in the last month of life. As cancer cases are expected to increase among the older population, the authors project that the costs will increase by almost 40 percent in 2020. More findings of their study can be found in The Lancet Oncology.

If the reduction of cancer costs is possible without causing any harm in patients, it is imperative that oncologists are properly guided to perform practices that support these findings, Smith and Kelly suggest. This will place more responsibility in the laps of oncologists.

"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," said Smith in this EurekAlert! article. The authors found Medicare data that revealed 30 percent of poor-prognosis patients spend their remaining month of life in a hospital.

The authors believe that this issue is an immediate cause for concern because of the projected spike in cancer cases among the population. A news release from the National Academies cited that the number of annual cancer diagnoses is expected to jump from its current number of 1.6 million to 2.3 million by 2030. This obviously indicates a dramatic cost increase, as numbers have jumped from $72 billion in costs in 2004 to $125 billion in 2010. They project $173 billion in costs by 2020. And these are just numbers for the U.S. population.

Smith and Kelly recommend having oncologists discuss the option of chemotherapy amongst patients with poor prognoses as well as having the oncology community consider reducing drug costs for such patients depending on how effectively the drugs can prolong life.

This study could bring a change to the current healthcare system for end-of-life cancer patients and could help save billions of dollars.

To read more about the John Hopkins University study, visit this EurekAlert! article.