Treatment workload by stage and subtype in patients with breast cancer: A SEER-Medicare analysis.

Abstract

e19328 Background: Patients with breast cancer experience significant disruption to their daily lives when undergoing treatment. When treatment workload exceeds the capacity to manage that treatment, patients are less likely to adhere to care plans and likelier to have worse outcomes. The purpose of this study was to assess treatment workload in patients with operable breast cancer in the SEER-Medicare dataset. Methods: Operable (stage I-III) breast cancer patients diagnosed from 2010-2016, > 65 years old at diagnosis, and with 18 months of continuous Medicare part A, B, and D coverage after diagnosis were included in the cohort. We calculated the number of outpatient appointment days, total cumulative inpatient lengths of stay, and distance traveled for patients in the cohort in the 18 months following diagnosis. We compared treatment workload outcomes between patients with stage I and stage III disease and between patients with HER2+ and HER2-/ER+ disease. Results: 35,071 patients met the inclusion criteria. Compared to stage I patients, stage III patients had more median outpatient appointment days (71 vs 50), more median inpatient days (2 vs 0), and greater median distance traveled (1846 vs 1332 miles). Compared to patients with HER2-/ER+ disease, patients with HER2+ disease had more median outpatient appointment days (70 vs 51), and greater median distance traveled (1775 vs 1350 miles). All comparisons were with Mann Whitney U and were statistically significant with P < .001. Conclusions: Patients with operable breast cancer experience a high amount of treatment workload in the first 18 months after diagnosis. These workload measures derived from SEER-Medicare claims differentiate significantly by stage and subtype, with stage III and HER2+ patients experiencing greater treatment workload than stage I and HER2-/ER+ patients respectively. We suspect that greater treatment workload in stage III is attributed to higher intensity of treatment for later stage cancer and associated complications, while greater treatment workload in HER2+ patients is attributed to the use of trastuzumab. [Table: see text]