Comparisons of Medical Cost Trajectories Between Non-Hispanic Black and Non-Hispanic White Patients With Newly Diagnosed Localized Prostate Cancer

Authors

Yu Liu
Shikun Wang
Liang Li
Ying Xu
Yu Shen
Ya-Chen Tina Shih

Publication Date

10-1-2023

Journal

Value Health

Abstract

Objectives: This study applied a recently developed statistical method to compare the mean cost trajectories between non-Hispanic White (NHW) and non-Hispanic Black (NHB) patients with localized prostate cancer conditioning on patients' survival.

Methods: In this observational study, we modeled cost trajectories of NHW and NHB patients with localized prostate cancer for 3 survival durations: 24, 48, and 72 months. We also compared the cost trajectories between NHW and NHB, stratified by comorbidities scores.

Results: We find that the mean cost trajectories of NHB were significantly higher than the trajectories of NHW in the last 12 months before death, regardless of the survival duration and patients' baseline comorbidity scores. For patients with comorbidity score ≥2, mean cost trajectories within the first year of diagnosis for NHB were significantly higher than those for NHW, except for the subgroup of patients with comorbidity 2-3 and whose survival length was 72 months.

Conclusions: Our results suggested that a higher proportion of NHB patients with high comorbidity scores are likely contribute to their higher end-of-life costs than those for NHW patients. To narrow the gap in healthcare-related financial burden between NHB and NHW patients with localized prostate cancer, policy makers need to explore different strategies to better manage comorbidities.

Keywords

Humans, Male, Black or African American, Ethnicity, Prostatic Neoplasms, White, Health Care Costs, chronic disease, healthcare costs, healthcare disparities

DOI

10.1016/j.jval.2023.06.003

PMID

37348833

PMCID

PMC10527436

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

10-1-2024

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Author MSS

Published Open-Access

yes