MANHASSET, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Often known as “forgotten patients,” many childhood cancer survivors face long-term side effects and medical complications post-treatment. It is up to the health system, and individual, to ensure they follow personalized screening plans to identify and address late-effects as early as possible. Dedicated survivorship programs can help develop survivorship plans, and facilitate needed screening procedures, however, can be associated with significant costs.

For the first time, costs of survivorship care in relation to survivor adherence and health system revenue were examined by Jonathan Fish, MD, member of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. This research was published in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine.

Results from the study, titled “Cost of Survivorship Care and Adherence to Screening–Aligning the Priorities of Health Care Systems and Survivors,” may better inform decision-making within health care systems and drive institution, or policy-level changes, to better support clinical efforts to improve patient adherence and the long-term survivorship care of childhood cancer survivors.
The need for long-term care

Approximately 80 percent of children diagnosed with cancer are cured of their disease, which equates to more than 500,000 childhood cancer survivors currently living in the United States. As a result of their exposure to various treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, survivors experience high rates of illness and mortality due to secondary health problems. As many as 95 percent of survivors will develop a chronic disease due to treatment effects.

Screening guidelines for long-term follow-up care exist, however, some research suggests that adherence to post-treatment screening remains sub-standard, even among high-risk survivors. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how follow-up care adherence is related to hospital-level finances. Such an understanding may lead to increased support for survivorship care programs.

Examining care versus cost

Revenue generation is one factor that influences decisions about resource allocation within health care systems. Survivorship care can be labor and time-intensive, and health system reimbursement for survivorship visits may be limited compared to other care service lines.

Dr. Fish and colleagues’ study reexamined data collected from previous research that took place between 2010 and 2012. They analyzed 286 childhood cancer survivors who were followed in the Survivors Facing Forward program, a long-term survivorship program within the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Transplant at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY.

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