A new analysis has found that two million cancer survivors did not get needed medical services in the previous year because of concerns about cost, reports a study published in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of The American Cancer Society.
Kathryn Weaver, PhD, MPH, of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, and her team sought to determine whether cancer history and race or ethnicity were associated with individuals' likelihood to go without care. Their analysis of data from 6,602 adult cancer survivors and 104,364 individuals with no history of cancer surveyed in the 2003-06 U.S. National Health Interview Survey revealed that 18 percent of U.S. cancer survivors, or roughly two million individuals, did not get one or more needed medical services because of financial concerns.
Specifically among cancer survivors, costs led 7.8 percent to put off medical care, 9.9 percent to skip prescription medications, 11.3 percent to forgo dental care and 2.7 percent to not seek mental healthcare, according to the study. Cancer survivors under the age of 65 years were 55 percent more likely to delay or forgo all types of medical care than their same-age peers without a history of cancer, while Hispanic and black cancer survivors were more likely to go without prescription medications and dental care than white survivors.
The data makes sense, David Howard, an Emory University researcher who focuses on cancer spending, told the Associated Press, noting that cancer survivors often suffer additional health problems. "If anything, I was surprised it was so low," said Howard, who was not involved in the new study.
"Future research needs to examine the impact of forgoing care on survivors' quality of life and survival," the authors concluded. Weaver noted that it will also be interesting to observe how recent healthcare reform efforts might affect access to care for cancer survivors.
To learn more:
- read this piece in The Medical News
- see this Associated Press article via the Washington Post
- here's the Cancer abstract