Cost of treatment for head and neck cancer in India
Open accessAbstract
There are no published data on the cost of cancer treatment for guiding reimbursement decisions in India. The present study was designed to estimate the cost of treating head and neck cancer (HNC) with the aim of determining package rates. The present study was undertaken in the Departments of Radiotherapy and Otolaryngology of a large tertiary care hospital in North India. Economic health system costs incurred were assessed using a bottom-up methodology. Data on all resources-capital or recurrent, incurred on the delivery of HNC treatment were collected from April 2014 to March 2015. Following the cost-of-illness approach, patients were interviewed to elicit out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure. A total of INR 40,993,017 (USD 0.67 million) was spent on radiotherapy care for treating HNC during 1 year. Salaries constituted the major component (42.6%) of this cost, followed by equipment/furniture (29%), space rent (20.7%), overheads and consumables (7.7%). In addition, INR 47,191 (USD 773) per HNC patient was spent on the surgery. Furthermore, patients spent an average amount ranging from INR 12,575 (USD 206) to INR 65,257 (USD 1069) on the different treatment therapies. In terms of package rates, cobalt radiotherapy alone was the cheapest (INR 38,714, USD 634), while intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) was most expensive (INR 192,914, USD 3161). The estimates from the present study could be used for developing package rates under various publicly financed health insurance schemes as well as for the planning for creation of new cancer centres.
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Being a well-equipped tertiary care center, both in terms of infrastructure/human resource and catering to more than 5000 cancer patients annually, justifies the appropriateness of unit cost estimates calculated based on the study hospital.
“Being a well-equipped tertiary care center, both in terms of infrastructure/human resource (more than 100 health care personnel involved in cancer care delivery) and catering to more than 5000 cancer patients annually, justifies the appropriateness of unit cost estimates calculated based on the study hospital. [51]”
From Cost effectiveness of strategies for cervical cancer prevention in India (2020) · cites this paper as [51]
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Cost effectiveness of strategies for cervical cancer prevention in India
Chauhan, A. S., Prinja, S., Srinivasan, R., Rai, B., Malliga, J., Jyani, G., Gupta, N., & Ghoshal, S. (2020) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0238291 · Cited by 75 · see citing works
“[51] A limitation of the study was the use of certain parameter values derived from a mathematical model.”
MethodSelf-citation
- Authors
- Chauhan, A. S., Prinja, S., Ghoshal, S., Verma, R., & Oinam, A. S.
- Affiliations
- Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (IN)
- Corresponding author
- Prinja, Shankar
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2018-01-11
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- e0191132
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5764364
- OpenAlex
- W2783732199
- Cited by
- 55
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 9.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic and Financial Impacts of Cancer
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advances in Oncology and Radiotherapy
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life
- Keywords
- head and neck cancer, cancer treatment costs, radiotherapy costs, out-of-pocket costs, economic burden, cobalt radiotherapy, intensity-modulated radiotherapy, health insurance reimbursement
- MeSH terms
- Head and Neck Neoplasms, Humans, India, Health Care Costs
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