"Obstructive prior authorization practices create potentially life-threatening delays to cancer treatment," said Dr. Dawson. "Despite well-intentioned goals to manage health care utilization and control costs, this broken process ultimately harms patients and wastes health care resources. "
The Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare estimated that $686 million in spending was associated with conducting prior authorizations in 2021. A separate study calculated a $40 million annual financial impact for the time required to secure approvals at academic radiation oncology clinics.
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ASTRO is one of more than 450 organizations asking lawmakers to pass the Improving Seniors' Timely Access to Care Act of 2021 (H.R. 3173; S. 3018), which currently has 292 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House and 24 bipartisan co-sponsors in the Senate, to bring much-needed transparency and oversight to the prior authorization process and help curb delays for people receiving cancer treatment.
ASTRO Ask #3: Support increased research funding for radiation oncology to enable continued innovation and state-of-the-art care
Bipartisan support for cancer research has contributed to averting 3.2 million deaths from cancer in the U.S. in the past three decades. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, threatened this progress: millions of cancer screenings were delayed, 80% of non-COVID clinical trials were stopped or interrupted and valuable resources were diverted from cancer research. Radiation oncologists, therefore, are asking lawmakers to renew and increase support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in contrast to the 3% decrease in NCI funding proposed in the president's FY2023 budget.
Earlier this month, ASTRO asked NIH Director Douglas Lowy, MD, for increased funding specifically for radiation oncology research. Radiation therapy is partially or fully responsible for 40% of all cancer cures, yet NIH forecasts indicate that radiation oncology research accounts for less than 6% of the FY2022 NCI budget.
"Investment in radiation oncology research creates outsized benefits for the public, with the potential to improve cure rates and provide palliative relief for millions of people," said Dr. Dawson. "Federal funding also supports cutting-edge technologies – such as radiopharmaceuticals, precision medicine and powerful new combinations of cancer therapies – that increase survival and improve our patients' quality of life."
