Price transparency measures are gaining popularity across the healthcare landscape, whether it’s hospitals announcing prices for common procedures or companies like Good Rx or SingleCare helping people get the best prices and discounts on prescription drugs.
Now, it appears that even in cancer treatment, price transparency and considerations come into play. March, Cardinal Health Launches Its Decision Pathway Solution, which integrates with the EHR to show providers side-by-side cost comparisons and indications for multiple oncology treatments. Decision Path, the latest in Cardinal’s Navista Tech Solutions (TS) suite of solutions, addresses a major problem for oncology patients: financial toxicity.
Cancer patients in particular are at disproportionate risk of financial toxicity, a term for patients falling into debt and facing financial hardship in order to afford treatment, According to the National Cancer Institute. For example, the rate of bankruptcy filings by cancer patients 2.7 times those without cancer.
Cardinal Health hopes Decision Path will change this statistic by helping physicians assess the cost-effective options available and suitability for each patient, ultimately promoting value-based care. Decision paths are developed by Cardinal Health’s innovation engine, Fuse.
“With Decision Path, cost estimates and comparisons are immediately available within the EHR workflow, enabling physicians and patients to easily access the critical information they need to make informed decisions that benefit both the patient and the practice,” said Tanya, director of the center Park says Cardinal Health’s innovative solutions, in Press Releases. “The cost transparency provided by the decision pathway can allow oncologists to work with cancer patients to seek the best treatment options and improve financial well-being,”
Historically, such cost and indication data have been available from external sources, creating undue time constraints on physicians and care teams accessing information for patients. The challenge of manually aggregating this information will only grow, as the National Comprehensive Cancer Network has approved more than 2,000 cancer protocols, and new options are frequently emerging. Therefore, tracking by traditional methods is difficult and time-consuming. With a shortage of suppliers, time is at a premium.
Considering how a patient’s insurance changes to affect the final cost of a given treatment, the equation turns into a calculus level to understand the cost.
“Patients are increasingly managing the high costs of cancer care, including drugs, surgery and other treatments. Decision Path offers a unique solution because it provides real-time visibility into patients’ out-of-pocket costs and helps oncologists Make high-quality treatment choices while also managing costs and optimizing value-based care performance in your practice,” said Amy Valley, vice president of clinical strategy and technology solutions at Cardinal Health, in a press release.
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