Cost implications of potentially avoidable hospitalizations among Oncology Care Model patients with prostate cancer.

Abstract

114 Background: Hospital-based care remains a major contributor to cost in oncology and thus represents an important cost-saving opportunity. We previously developed a rigorous two-stage consensus driven review process to identify potentially avoidable hospitalizations (PAHs) among oncology care model (OCM) patients with prostate cancer and reported a 28% rate of PAHs between 1/2012-6/2015. Our current objective was to estimate the magnitude of any expected cost savings generated if inpatient care from these PAHs were shifted to an acute care model in the outpatient setting. Methods: Costs for ambulatory acute care management among a separate but characteristically similar cohort of cancer patients were obtained from our institution’s recently established Oncology Care Unit (OCU), where acute clinical issues are managed in an enhanced ambulatory setting. We used an exact-matching algorithm to match previously identified PAHs to OCU visits based on strata of age (≤ 70 years vs. > 70 years), categorically defined chief complaint (infusion/transfusion, lab abnormalities, symptom control, and diagnostic work-up), and the presence of “systemic disease” (metastatic disease or hematologic malignancy). PAH costs obtained from OCM data were compared to costs from these matched OCU encounters. Results: We identified 89 acute care OCU visits occurring from 5/2017-12/2018, of which 48 were fully evaluable based on documentation. Twenty-five of our initial 28 PAHs (89%) matched to 29 OCU acute care visits. The mean inpatient cost among matched PAHs was $15,879 compared to $975 for matched OCU visits. Boot strapping within each match produced a mean estimated cost savings of $15,120 (95% CI $13,682 to $16,557) per PAH. We estimate this per event savings to yield an overall spending decrement of 5.7% for OCM prostate cancer episodes. Conclusions: PAHs contribute substantially to costs of care in oncology. Investment in specialized ambulatory acute care services for oncology patients could lead to meaningful cost savings by shifting avoidable inpatient care to the outpatient setting.