6629 Background: While oncologists are educated to deal with the medical complexities of their treatment, a new side effect, that of financial toxicity, has arisen over the past several years. One of the major challenges in private practice is explaining the monetary cost of treatment to the patient. Methods: 50 medical oncologists agreed to take a survey judging their knowledge of the financial cost of the treatments used in patients with the five most common tumors treated in the office: breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and three other commonly treated cancers: chronic myelogenous leukemia, multiple myeloma and ovarian cancer. Treatment regimens in the adjuvant and first line metastatic setting were used. Physicians were asked to calculate the cost of treatments to the patient and not the acquisition price of drugs. They were asked to calculate the cost based a patient completing their adjuvant therapy or treatment in the first-line metastatic setting, which was defined by each practicioner. If desired, this included the use of maintenance therapy. A body surface area of 1.8 M2 for men and 1.6 M2 for women was used. Results: 39 medical oncologists completed the entire survey. Of these, 11 were in solo practicie. 27/39 were in practice over 15 years, while only 4 were in practice under 5 years. In almost all cases where intravenous or oral targeted therapies were used, the physicians under-estimated the actual cost of treatment to the patient by 25–40%. When ‘conventional‘ intravenous chemotherapy was used, they were either correct or over-estimated the cost of treatment by 25 to 33%, especially when generic substitution of trade name drugs were available. More importantly, the actual dollar difference was up to $50,000 when targeted therapies were in the treatment regimen but only around $5,000 when conventional treatments were considered. Nearly all the physicians were ‘within the ballpark‘ when dealing with the cost of oral medications. Conclusions: Medical oncologists have a poor understanding of the monetary costs of the newer treatments they are prescribing. More education is needed in the economics, including monetary cost-benefit analysis, of oncology practice so that we can better serve our patients and society. No significant financial relationships to disclose.
The Impact Of Food Inflation On Urban Poverty And Its Monetary Cost: Some Back-Of-The-Envelope Calculations
