The financial distress of cancer patients can be measured using a newly developed 11-item, patient-reported outcome measure, investigators said June 20 online in Cancer.
The content for a comprehensive score for financial toxicity (COST) was developed with a stepwise approach involving 155 patients with advanced cancer. A literature review and semistructured, qualitative interviews with patients were followed by patients’ assessment of the items for importance to their quality of life, pilot testing, and finally an exploratory factor analysis, reported Dr. Jonas A. de Souza of the University of Chicago Medicine and his associates.
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The tool is a "first and major step" towards measuring how financial distress affects the lives of cancer patients.
The final content included 11 questions: 1 financial item, 2 resource items, and 8 affect items. In the factor analysis, no sociodemographic factor was found significantly associated with the COST score, including household income (Cancer 2014 June 20 [doi:10.1002/cncr.28814]).
COST is a "first and major step" towards measuring how financial distress impacts the lives of patients with cancer, the authors said.
"A thoughtful, concise tool that could help predict a patient’s risk for financial toxicity might open the lines of communication. This gives us a way to launch that discussion," Dr. de Souza and his associates wrote.
The researchers are now conducting a further study to validate and correlate the COST scale with quality of life and anxiety in cancer patients.
All study participants had advanced cancer, were privately insured, were on chemotherapy, and had received treatment for at least 3 months and had therefore received cancer care bills.
One of the study coauthors disclosed receiving grants and personal fees from several pharmaceutical companies and owning stock options in Biscayne Pharmaceuticals.