State-Level Estimates of Cancer-Related Absenteeism Costs

Abstract

Background Cancer is one of the top five most costly diseases in the United States and leads to substantial work loss. Nevertheless, limited state-level estimates of cancer absenteeism costs have been published. Methods In analyses of data from the 2004–2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, the 2004 National Nursing Home Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau for 2008, and the 2009 Current Population Survey, we used regression modeling to estimate annual state-level absenteeism costs attributable to cancer from 2004 to 2008. Results We estimated that the state-level median number of days of absenteeism per year among employed cancer patients was 6.1 days and that annual state-level cancer absenteeism costs ranged from $14.9 million to $915.9 million (median = $115.9 million) across states in 2010 dollars. Absenteeism costs are approximately 6.5% of the costs of premature cancer mortality. Conclusions The results from this study suggest that lost productivity attributable to cancer is a substantial cost to employees and employers and contributes to estimates of the overall impact of cancer in a state population.

Social costs of loss in productivity-related absenteeism in Poland

“…Measures aimed at creating working conditions that are safe for pregnant women may reduce the cost of lost productivity due to absenteeism of pregnant women, as well as high financial burden for the payer of insurance benefits. Research conducted by Marcinkiewicz and Hanke [30] has also disclosed very little involvement of occupational health services and workers in activities related to preventive care over the working pregnant women, pointing to poor cooperation between medical doctors and gynecologists working in the field of exchange of information on the health status and working conditions of pregnant other studies on diseases of the circulatory system [43] and neoplasms [44] indicate a high economic cost of absenteeism related to the underlying diseases and justify taking action on the early detection and prevention of these diseases in order to reduce the cost of insurance benefits.…”

The relationship between chronic conditions and absenteeism and associated costs in Canada

“…Many studies have focused on measuring the number of absent workdays among people with one health condition (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13). Due to different settings, populations, measures and methods, estimates of absent workdays and the associated productivity loss due to a health condition from different studies vary widely and may not be comparable.…”

The changing relationship between health burden and work disability of Australian cancer survivors, 2003–2017: evidence from a longitudinal survey

“…Recent studies have confirmed this result with disadvantaged socio-economic status of cancer survivors being negatively associated with long-term health effects or work-related disability [62,63]. Some studies have also provided evidence that the magnitude of the cancer burden is negatively associated with socioeconomic status [16,[31][32][33][34]. Furthermore, adverse health outcomes (e.g., worse health status, long and short-term disability and shorter life expectancy) were disproportionately found in poorer people as opposed to those with higher socio-economic status [13,16,31,33,[64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71].…”

“…Return to work participation may assist cancer survivors to recover faster, improve their quality of life, help return them to their former 'normal' life, increase their self-confidence, and may support them to overcome the negative side-effects of treatment [14,15]. Furthermore, improvement of work participation of cancer survivors contributes to societal benefit, by reducing absenteeism, and reducing disability benefit payments and productivity losses [16]. Notably, cancer survivors' earnings are 10% lower compared to non-cancer survivors [17].…”

“…Existing studies have focused on cancer survivors' characteristics and work participation, including in the United States [1,10,12,16,[25][26][27], Canada [3,13], South Korea [8], the Netherlands [5,6,9], and Belgium [4,28]. A number of factors adversely influencing work participation of patients with cancer has been determined in different settings.…”