What is known?
Although the incidence of cancer is increasing as our population ages, better cancer treatments have led to improved survival for cancer patients. As a result, there is a growing number of cancer survivors in Australia, many of whom experience long-term health consequences related to their treatment. There is little information available about the collective burden of healthcare costs among the growing cohort of cancer survivor.
What is new?
This protocol describes a study to assess costs of long-term health effects for the estimated 475,000 cancer survivors diagnosed with their first cancer in Queensland between 1997 and 2015. The study plans to capture survivors’ long-term utilisation of the health system and associated economic costs on a population level by linking data from cancer registry records to state and national healthcare databases.
What does this mean?
This study will enable a much better understanding of the long-term health and economic costs associated with cancer survivorship in Queensland. Results will provide a baseline for resource planning to meet future public health needs and may help identify where improvements are needed in health service delivery.
Contact: Joanne Aitken
Reference: Merollini KMD, Gordon LG, Aitken JF, Kimlin MG. Lifetime Costs of Surviving Cancer—A Queensland Study (COS-Q): Protocol of a Large Healthcare Data Linkage Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2020; 17(2831).