Modelling the costs of caring for people with cancer at the end of life

The Cicely Saunders Institute Seminar by Mr Jeff Round, Bristol University

Title: Modelling the costs of caring for people with cancer at the end of life

Abstract: People with advanced cancer require a range of health, social and informal care during the final phases of life. The cost of providing care to this group as they approach the end of their lives is unknown, but represents a significant cost to health and social care systems, charities, and patients and their families. In this study, we estimated the direct and indirect costs for lung, breast, colorectal and prostate cancer patients at the end of life in England and Wales. We used a modelling-based approach to estimate the costs of care, with data taken from the literature and publicly available data sets. We estimated the costs of care for our patient group to be £641 million. But perhaps our most striking finding was the uncertainty in our results. This presentation will focus on the difficulties we faced when trying to estimate the cost of care, including the lack of data and how to value the role of informal carers, and how this led to such uncertainty. I will also discuss the implications of the research for service planning and make recommendations for a future research agenda.

About the speaker: Jeff Round is a health economist based at the University of Bristol. He has spent the last 5 years focusing on the economics of end of life care. The research he is presenting is based on work undertaken towards his PhD and was recently published in Palliative Medicine. He has edited a book titled ‘End of life care: An economic perspective’ due for publication from Springer in February 2016.

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