What Explains Cancer Costs in England?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
What Explains Cancer Costs in England?
IRAS ID
218347
Contact name
Mauro Laudicella
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Macmillan Cancer Support
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 0 days
Research summary
This study will investigate the main factors driving the costs of cancer. Specifically, we will measure the effect of different routes to cancer diagnosis on the costs of cancer up to five years from diagnosis. Previous research has identified eight main routes to cancer diagnosis: Screen-detected, Two-Week Wait referral, Emergency presentation, GP-referral, Inpatient Elective, Other Outpatient, Death Certificate Only, and Unknown. It has been shown that different routes are associated with different health outcomes. However, little is known about route of diagnosis’ impact on costs. For instance, patients diagnosed after an emergency presentation are likely to be in need of more expensive treatment (positive effect on costs) but also are less likely to lengthy survival following diagnosis (negative effect on costs).
Routes to diagnosis which allow for earlier detection of cancer may result in cost savings compared to routes to diagnosis which do not allow for earlier detection of cancer. Understanding the impact cost differences across routes to diagnosis will aid policymakers and health managers in making appropriate investments to those routes which provides earlier diagnosis of cancer.
Other potential drivers of costs will be also investigated in this analysis, including: patient characteristics (age, gender, cancer staging), characteristics of patient place of residence (e.g. deprivation), accessibility of primary and secondary care services (e.g. distance from hospitals and GPs).
We will examine patients with colorectal, lung, breast and prostate cancer in England and use powerful new data linking the cancer registry data with hospital utilisation and costs.REC name
London - Stanmore Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/2086
Date of REC Opinion
15 Nov 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion