28
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      The cost of lost productivity due to premature cancer-related mortality: an economic measure of the cancer burden

      research-article
      1 , , 2
      BMC Cancer
      BioMed Central
      Productivity costs, Years of life lost, Cancer, Economic burden, Ireland

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Background

          Most measures of the cancer burden take a public health perspective. Cancer also has a significant economic impact on society. To assess this economic burden, we estimated years of potential productive life lost (YPPLL) and costs of lost productivity due to premature cancer-related mortality in Ireland.

          Methods

          All cancers combined and the 10 sites accounting for most deaths in men and in women were considered. To compute YPPLL, deaths in 5-year age-bands between 15 and 64 years were multiplied by average working-life expectancy. Valuation of costs, using the human capital approach, involved multiplying YPPLL by age-and-gender specific gross wages, and adjusting for unemployment and workforce participation. Sensitivity analyses were conducted around retirement age and wage growth, labour force participation, employment and discount rates, and to explore the impact of including household production and caring costs. Costs were expressed in €2009.

          Results

          Total YPPLL was lower in men than women (men = 10,873; women = 12,119). Premature cancer-related mortality costs were higher in men (men: total cost = €332 million, cost/death = €290,172, cost/YPPLL = €30,558; women: total cost = €177 million, cost/death = €159,959, cost/YPPLL = €14,628). Lung cancer had the highest premature mortality cost (€84.0 million; 16.5% of total costs), followed by cancers of the colorectum (€49.6 million; 9.7%), breast (€49.4 million; 9.7%) and brain & CNS (€42.4 million: 8.3%). The total economic cost of premature cancer-related mortality in Ireland amounted to €509.5 million or 0.3% of gross domestic product. An increase of one year in the retirement age increased the total all-cancer premature mortality cost by 9.9% for men and 5.9% for women. The inclusion of household production and caring costs increased the total cost to €945.7 million.

          Conclusion

          Lost productivity costs due to cancer-related premature mortality are significant. The higher premature mortality cost in males than females reflects higher wages and rates of workforce participation. Productivity costs provide an alternative perspective on the cancer burden on society and may inform cancer control policy decisions.

          Related collections

          Most cited references16

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Recommendations of the Panel on Cost-effectiveness in Health and Medicine.

          To develop consensus-based recommendations for the conduct of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). This article, the second in a 3-part series, describes the basis for recommendations constituting the reference case analysis, the set of practices developed to guide CEAs that inform societal resource allocation decisions, and the content of these recommendations. The Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, a nonfederal panel with expertise in CEA, clinical medicine, ethics, and health outcomes measurement, was convened by the US Public Health Service (PHS). The panel reviewed the theoretical foundations of CEA, current practices, and alternative methods used in analyses. Recommendations were developed on the basis of theory where possible, but tempered by ethical and pragmatic considerations, as well as the needs of users. The panel developed recommendations through 2 1/2 years of discussions. Comments on preliminary drafts prepared by panel working groups were solicited from federal government methodologists, health agency officials, and academic methodologists. The panel's methodological recommendations address (1) components belonging in the numerator and denominator of a cost-effectiveness (C/E) ratio; (2) measuring resource use in the numerator of a C/E ratio; (3) valuing health consequences in the denominator of a C/E ratio; (4) estimating effectiveness of interventions; (5) incorporating time preference and discounting; and (6) handling uncertainty. Recommendations are subject to the ¿rule of reason,¿ balancing the burden engendered by a practice with its importance to a study. If researchers follow a standard set of methods in CEA, the quality and comparability of studies, and their ultimate utility, can be much improved.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Cost-of-illness analysis. What room in health economics?

            Cost-of-illness (COI) was the first economic evaluation technique used in the health field. The principal aim was to measure the economic burden of illness to society. Its usefulness as a decision-making tool has however been questioned since its inception. The main criticism came from welfare economists who rejected COIs because they were not grounded in welfare economics theory. Other attacks related to the use of the human capital approach (HCA) to evaluate morbidity and mortality costs since it was said that the HCA had nothing to do with the value people attach to their lives. Finally, objections were made that COI could not be of any help to decision makers and that other forms of economic evaluation (e.g. cost-effectiveness, cost-benefit analysis) would be much more useful to those taking decisions and ranking priorities. Conversely, it is here suggested that COI can be a good economic tool to inform decision makers if it is considered from another perspective. COI is a descriptive study that can provide information to support the political process as well as the management functions at different levels of the healthcare organisations. To do that, the design of the study must be innovative, capable of measuring the true cost to society; to estimate the main cost components and their incidence over total costs; to envisage the different subjects who bear the costs; to identify the actual clinical management of illness; and to explain cost variability. In order to reach these goals, COI need to be designed as observational bottom-up studies.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Productivity costs of cancer mortality in the United States: 2000-2020.

              A model that predicts the economic benefit of reduced cancer mortality provides critical information for allocating scarce resources to the interventions with the greatest benefits. We developed models using the human capital approach, which relies on earnings as a measure of productivity, to estimate the value of productivity lost as a result of cancer mortality. The base model aggregated age- and sex-specific data from four primary sources: 1) the US Bureau of the Census, 2) US death certificate data for 1999-2003, 3) cohort life tables from the Berkeley Mortality Database for 1900-2000, and 4) the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey. In a model that included costs of caregiving and household work, data from the National Human Activity Pattern Survey and the Caregiving in the U.S. study were used. Sensitivity analyses were performed using six types of cancer assuming a 1% decline in cancer mortality rates. The values of forgone earnings for employed individuals and imputed forgone earnings for informal caregiving were then estimated for the years 2000-2020. The annual productivity cost from cancer mortality in the base model was approximately $115.8 billion in 2000; the projected value was $147.6 billion for 2020. Death from lung cancer accounted for more than 27% of productivity costs. A 1% annual reduction in lung, colorectal, breast, leukemia, pancreatic, and brain cancer mortality lowered productivity costs by $814 million per year. Including imputed earnings lost due to caregiving and household activity increased the base model total productivity cost to $232.4 billion in 2000 and to $308 billion in 2020. Investments in programs that target the cancers with high incidence and/or cancers that occur in younger, working-age individuals are likely to yield the greatest reductions in productivity losses to society.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                BMC Cancer
                BMC Cancer
                BMC Cancer
                BioMed Central
                1471-2407
                2014
                26 March 2014
                : 14
                : 224
                Affiliations
                [1 ]National College of Ireland, Mayor Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
                [2 ]National Cancer Registry Ireland, Cork Airport Business Park, Kinsale Road, Cork, Ireland
                Article
                1471-2407-14-224
                10.1186/1471-2407-14-224
                3986872
                24670067
                d15e942f-9d81-428e-a410-2837bbc125f1
                Copyright © 2014 Hanly and Sharp; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 1 November 2013
                : 14 March 2014
                Categories
                Research Article

                Oncology & Radiotherapy
                productivity costs,years of life lost,cancer,economic burden,ireland
                Oncology & Radiotherapy
                productivity costs, years of life lost, cancer, economic burden, ireland

                Comments

                Comment on this article