Validity of information obtained from a method for estimating cancer costs from the perspective of patients and caregivers

Abstract

Evidence to date supports the validity of estimates obtained using this method.

The out of pocket cost of breast cancer survivors: a review

“…However, it is not surprising. Collecting these costs is not straightforward as instruments to collect them are not available [28]. Therefore, opportunities to collect OOP costs from participants of clinical trials of survivorship interventions or from larger populations of survivors are missed.…”

‘The bills that were coming in…’: out of pocket costs during relocation for specialist treatment for haematological malignancies

“…And then we missed out on that $1000 threshold thing that they got and we were back to square one when the next year started and we never got on where the medication decreased. NHL_RegRural_48yrs_M reliable and validated instruments are not available to collect data on OOP costs [3,30]. Indeed, the lack of instruments is seen as partly contributing, through lost opportunity, to the lack of work completed in the area.…”

Accurate Measurement of Financial Toxicity Is a Prerequisite to Finding a Remedy

“…There may also be a trade-off between specifying the costs that researchers expect patients will think important, in order to trigger their memory, versus allowing free space for patients to express other costs they feel are important but overlooked by researchers [18]. The complexity of the question is also relevant in terms of the extent to which the patient must mentally sum numerous and diverse costs in order to arrive at a total cost [10,13].…”

“…Yet the availability of instruments to examine OOP costs in cancer patients is limited (for breast cancer, one US review identified just 3 studies which had examined them) [7] and few have been validated in terms of showing they accurately capture the costs they were designed to measure [10].…”