Exploring Healthcare Costs and Benefits of Precision Medicine in Patient Care

Dr. Derrick Haslem and Dr. Lincoln Nadauld from the Precision Genomics Program, Intermountain Healthcare, Saint George, UT, discuss a research paper they co-authored that was published by Oncotarget as the cover for Volume 9, Issue 15, entitled, “Precision oncology in advanced cancer patients improves overall survival with lower weekly healthcare costs.” DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.24384 Correspondence to - Lincoln D. Nadauld - lincoln.nadauld@imail.org Abstract The impact of precision oncology on guiding treatment decisions of late-stage cancer patients was previously studied in a retrospective analysis. However, the overall survival and costs were not previously evaluated. We report the overall survival and healthcare costs associated with precision oncology in these patients with advanced cancer. Building on a matched cohort study of 44 patients with metastatic cancer who received all of their care within a single institution, we evaluated the overall survival and healthcare costs for each patient. We analyzed the outcomes of 22 patients who received genomic testing and targeted therapy (precision oncology) between July 1, 2013 and January 31, 2015, and compared to 22 historically controlled patients (control) who received standard chemotherapy (N = 17) or best supportive care (N = 5). The median overall survival was 51.7 weeks for the targeted treatment group and 25.8 weeks for the control group (P = 0.008) when matching on age, gender, histological diagnosis and previous treatment lines. Average costs over the entire period were $2,720 per week for the targeted treatment group and $3,453 per week for the control group, (P = 0.036). A separate analysis of 1,814 patients with late-stage cancer diagnoses found that those who received a targeted cancer treatment (N = 93) had 6.9% lower costs in the last 3 months of life compared with those who did not. These findings suggest that precision oncology may improve overall survival for refractory cancer patients while lowering average per-week healthcare costs, resource utilization and end-of-life costs. Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article - https://oncotarget.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Foncotarget.24384 Press release - https://www.oncotarget.com/news/pr/precision-oncology-in-advanced-cancer-patients-improves-overall-survival-with-lower-weekly-healthcare-costs/ Keywords - precision medicine, oncology, outcomes, costs, overall survival About Oncotarget Oncotarget is a peer-reviewed, open access biomedical journal covering research on all aspects of oncology. To learn more about Oncotarget, please visit https://www.oncotarget.com and connect with us: SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/oncotarget Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Oncotarget/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/oncotarget Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oncotargetjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/OncotargetYouTube/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oncotarget Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/oncotarget/ Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/Oncotarget/ Oncotarget is published by Impact Journals, LLC: https://www.ImpactJournals.com Media Contact MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM 18009220957