Fujian Provincial Hospital Reports Findings in Breast Cancer (Impact of public health insurance coverage of novel anticancer medication on medical expenditure and patient affordability in a provincial medical centre of China: a propensity …): Oncology – Breast Cancer

2022 FEB 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Oncology - Breast Cancer is the subject of a report. According to news reporting originating from Fujian, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Little is known about the impact of the government’s efforts in having novel anticancer medicines covered by the public health insurance system in China. This study targeted the above policy implemented in Fujian province in 2017, analysed the policy impact on the medical expenditure of cancer treatment and patient affordability based on the clinical data of Fujian provincial medical centre.”

Financial supporters for this research include Peking Union Medical College, Peking Union Medical College.

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Fujian Provincial Hospital, “The study included 253 human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive patients with breast cancer who completed at least one course of trastuzumab treatment extracted from the hospital health information system of the provincial medical centre of Fujian. We adopted the propensity score-matching method to mimic a quasi-experimental design to estimate the impact of the public health insurance coverage policy on all the indicated patients with a before-after comparison of the total breast cancer-associated direct medical expenditures for a standard course of treatment or maintenance treatment and the proportionate patient out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure based on the real clinical data. We found evidence of an association between the public health insurance coverage of novel breast cancer medication and the reductions of the medical expenditure by US$18661.02 (95% CI 13 836.57 to 28 201.45), and the proportionate patient OOP expenditure by 24% (95% CI0.20 to 0.27). The medical expenditure and the proportionate patient OOP expenditure might be generally reduced. The coverage of innovative antibreast cancer medicines by the public health insurance was found to be associated with a reduction of the medical expenditure and share of patient OOP expenditure for cancer treatment of the indicated patients. Patients with lower ability-to-pay did not benefit well from the coverage policy.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “To maximise the welfare of the public health insurance coverage of novel anticancer medication, the study called for strengthened health insurance benefit packages of the rural patient and the patient enrolled in the urban and rural resident health insurance programme, who might have lower ability-to-pay and need more support from the public security system.”

For more information on this research see: Impact of public health insurance coverage of novel anticancer medication on medical expenditure and patient affordability in a provincial medical centre of China: a propensity score-matching analysis with the quasi-experimental design. BMJ Open, 2022;12(2). BMJ Open can be contacted at: Bmj Publishing Group, British Med Assoc House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JR, England. (BMJ Publishing Group - http://group.bmj.com/; BMJ Open - http://bmjopen.bmj.com/)

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Mengbo Lin, Affiliated Clinical Medical Institute of Fujian Medical University, Fujian Provincial Hospital, Fuzhou, Fujian, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Yifan Diao, Kai Xu, Ji Huang, Xiongwei Wu, Mingshuang Li, Jing Sun and Hong Li.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-054713. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the journal BMJ Open is: Bmj Publishing Group, British Med Assoc House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JR, England.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)