Estimating the cost of cancer to Australia’s health services

Background

Approximately 145,000 new diagnoses of cancer are predicted in Australia in 2019.  Cancer care represents a substantial and rapidly rising healthcare cost in Australia, as the number of people diagnosed with cancer in Australia is rising due to an ageing and increasing population, and because of lifestyle and environmental factors.

This is the first comprehensive piece of research on the cost of all cancers in Australia, from diagnosis through to end of life, using information from real patients and including all related health services costs. Previous cancer costing studies have focused only on specific cancer types in limited geographical locations, or on certain sources of costs (e.g. chemotherapy costs or end-of-life care).

The research

This study estimated the cost of cancer to Australia’s health services which included Medicare and pharmaceutical claims, inpatient hospital episodes and emergency department presentations. The research team compared participants diagnosed with cancer to similar people who didn’t have cancer.

The study found that in 2013, the cost for Australians diagnosed during 2009-2013 was around $6.3billion.  The largest costs were associated with bowel cancer ($1.1billion), breast cancer ($0.8billion), lung cancer ($0.6billion) and prostate cancer ($0.5billion).

It was found that the average excess cost of care per case was AUD$1,622 for the year before diagnosis, $33,944 for the first year post-diagnosis and $8,796 for the second year post-diagnosis, with considerable variation by cancer type.

Costs are expected to have increased even further since 2013 because a range of expensive new targeted therapies and immunotherapies have since been approved for cancer treatment in Australia.  The analysis also did not capture the substantial treatment costs that patients pay themselves.