Objectives

SARS-Cov-2 has put a burden on most aspects of our societies worldwide. Although the benefit-risk of available therapeutics has been extensively evaluated, the financial burden of the pandemic has been scarcely investigated. The purpose for this real-world study was to assess the one-year monetary impact of vaccination amongst a cohort of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methods

Data were extracted from Symphony Health, a large-scale US claims database that contains diagnostic, therapeutic, demographic and claims data from over 300M unique patients. Patients with a diagnostic of NSCLC from Jan 2019 to End 2020 were included. They were categorized as receiving immunotherapy (IO) or chemotherapy (CHE), vaccine (VAC+) or no vaccine (VAC-). The outcomes of interest were a diagnostic of Covid-19, claims for prescription medicine, and hospitalizations. The hospitalization costs were stratified by IO, CHE, VAC and Covid-19 diagnostic.

Results

138.943 NSCLC patients were included in the analysis. 70.924 received IO, 68.019 received CHE, and at the time 14.195 had received Covid-19 vaccination. Overall, vaccinated patients had similar hospitalization costs ($205.259) than those who were not vaccinated ($219.531) (p=NS). However, when focusing on patients who developed Covid-19, vaccinated patients had lower annual costs: $212.542 against non-vaccinated patients: $247.674 (p<0.05). In terms of costs attributable to Covid, the highest difference was seen amongst patients with IO and VAC- ($81.733), followed by CHE/VAC- ($30.839), CHE/VAC+ ($23.993) and IO/VAC+ ($5.133) (all p<0.05). In an ecological perspective, total hospitalization costs in patients who contracted Covid-19 were way higher for VAC- patients than for VAC+: $731.544.551 vs $158.951.160 (p<0.05).

Conclusions

This study adds a layer of evidence on the interest of vaccine to limit the healthcare burden of Covid-19 in patients with severe comorbidities such as NSCLC. These results are of relevance for governments, hospitals, HMO’s and the pharmaceutical industry.