Abstract
Reports on the expenditure of cancer treatments per patient using comprehensive data remain unavailable in Japan. This study aimed to use Japan’s cancer registry data and health service utilization data for evaluating the disease-specific, per-patient costs of five major cancers—stomach, lung, colorectal, liver, and breast cancers. We used a database linking the 2017 data from a hospital-based cancer registry and the health service utilization data from the Diagnosis Procedure Combination survey. All patients who started their first treatment course at each hospital were included. The costs were calculated using the total volume of the health services provided and the unit fee information included in the data. We analyzed 304,698 patients. Lung cancer had the highest healthcare cost per-patient for the first year of diagnosis and the longest median hospitalization duration. Conversely, breast cancer showed the lowest cost and the shortest median hospitalization duration. However, in the first month after diagnosis, colorectal cancer showed the highest cost. Subsequently, the gaps between the costs of the five common cancers drastically diminished. The cancer type having the longest hospitalization duration had the highest overall healthcare resource utilization costs. This information is essential for care planning and research studies.
Highlights
The burden of cancer is continuously increasing
The rising costs present a huge challenge for policymakers with respect to adequate resource management, which incorporates a comprehensive evaluation of resources used [3,4]
The hospital-based cancer registry (HBCR) data include the clinical and pathological stages, tumor–node–metastasis (TNM) classifications (UICC 7th edition), tumor location, and histopathology according to the International Classification of Diseases Oncology 3rd edition (ICD-O-3)
Summary
The burden of cancer is continuously increasing. In 2018, around 16.8 million patients were newly diagnosed with cancer worldwide, leading to 9.6 million deaths, which have been constantly rising each year [1]. Japan has increased incidence rates, causing a rapid surge in health expenditures, and an estimated 40 billion JPY is spent annually on cancer care [5,6,7]. This increment is possibly attributable to an increase in the number of patients resulting from the country’s high aging population, and technological advances producing more expensive tests and treatments into the market. To develop measures necessary for appropriate resource allocation, policymakers need accurate information on how the resources are used to treat major diseases These data will aid in establishing evidence-based policymaking in order to address the prospect of healthcare expenditures that are robust to change
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