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Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Factors impacting hospitalisation and related health service costs in cancer survivors in Australia: Results from a population data linkage study in Queensland (COS-Q)
Cancer Medicine, Vol.13(17), pp.1-12
2024
Appears in UniSC Supported Open Access Outputs
Abstract
Background
The global economic cost of cancer and the costs of ongoing care for survivors are increasing. Little is known about factors affecting hospitalisations and related costs for the growing number of cancer survivors. Our aim was to identify associated factors of cancer survivors admitted to hospital in the public system and their costs from a health services perspective.
Methods
A population-based, retrospective, data linkage study was conducted in Queensland (COS-Q), Australia, including individuals diagnosed with a first primary cancer who incurred healthcare costs between 2013 and 2016. Generalised linear models were fitted to explore associations between socio-demographic (age, sex, country of birth, marital status, occupation, geographic remoteness category and socio-economic index) and clinical (cancer type, year of/time since diagnosis, vital status and care type) factors with mean annual hospital costs and mean episode costs.
Results
Of the cohort (N = 230,380) 48.5% (n = 111,820) incurred hospitalisations in the public system (n = 682,483 admissions). Hospital costs were highest for individuals who died during the costing period (cost ratio ‘CR’: 1.79, p < 0.001) or living in very remote or remote location (CR: 1.71 and CR: 1.36, p < 0.001) or aged 0–24 years (CR: 1.63, p < 0.001). Episode costs were highest for individuals in rehabilitation or palliative care (CR: 2.94 and CR: 2.34, p < 0.001), or very remote location (CR: 2.10, p < 0.001). Higher contributors to overall hospital costs were ‘diseases and disorders of the digestive system’ (AU$661 m, 21% of admissions) and ‘neoplastic disorders’ (AU$554 m, 20% of admissions).
Conclusions
We identified a range of factors associated with hospitalisation and higher hospital costs for cancer survivors, and our results clearly demonstrate very high public health costs of hospitalisation. There is a lack of obvious means to reduce these costs in the short or medium term which emphasises an increasing economic imperative to improving cancer prevention and investments in home- or community-based patient support services.
Details
- Title
- Factors impacting hospitalisation and related health service costs in cancer survivors in Australia: Results from a population data linkage study in Queensland (COS-Q)
- Authors
- Katharina Merollini (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health - Public HealthLouisa Collins (Author) - QIMR Berghofer Medical Research InstituteAndrew Jones (Author) - The University of QueenslandJoanne Aitken (Author) - The University of QueenslandMichael Kimlin (Author) - Bond University
- Publication details
- Cancer Medicine, Vol.13(17), pp.1-12
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Date published
- 2024
- DOI
- 10.1002/cam4.70201
- ISSN
- 2045-7634
- Copyright note
- © 2024 The Author(s). Cancer Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Data Availability
- The data that support the findings of this study are available from the data custodians of each of the linked datasets, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Aggregated data used for this manuscript are however available from the authors upon reasonable request.
- Organisation Unit
- Cancer Research Cluster; School of Health - Public Health
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991061497802621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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