Grant: Operating Grant: Secondary Data Analysis for Cancer Prevention and Control

For those living with lung cancer, the impact of this diagnosis on each person's life is almost uniformly devastating. At a health system level, the resources needed to deliver high quality care to lung cancer patients and the costs that follow this is immense. Timely and reliable estimates of lung cancer specific costs are important for health care decision makers to assess the overall economic burden of lung cancer; measure the overall magnitude of resources needed to care for this patient population; and potentially reflect on the impact of health system funding policies and access to health services at a provincial and regional level. Comparing lung cancer costs among different provinces is not routinely done however has the potential to highlight similarities and differences in programs related to screening, diagnosis and/or treatment and use this information to reduce inequalities in cancer care. The overall goal of our project is to compare healthcare related costs of lung cancer between two provinces, Saskatchewan and Ontario, using Cancer Registry and Administrative data. In pursuit of this goal, we have four specific objectives: 1: Compare cancer and non-cancer medication costs; 2: Compare radiation therapy use; 3: Compare number and cost of physician visits and hospitalizations; 4: Compare the rate of death in hospital; This project will allow two provinces with well-established cancer registries and high quality administrative data sources to enhance the understanding of healthcare patterns and costs in this devastating disease.