OBJECTIVES: The phase of care costing approach has been used by the National Cancer Institute in the US [J Natl Cancer Inst 2008;100: 630 – 641] to predict long term cancer cost. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in Taiwan. The current study aims to investigate the cost of lung cancer by care phases to inform policy makers on the disease burden of lung cancer in Taiwan.

METHODS: We identified lung cancer patients diagnosed 2010 ~ 2014 from Taiwan Cancer Registry. We obtained medical cost of these patients by linking registry to National Health Insurance claims data via de-identified personal ID [ie, payer’s perspective, National Health Insurance in Taiwan]. We stratified costs into three care phases: initial (first 12 months after diagnosis), terminal (last 12 months of life), and continuing (in between initial and terminal phase), visually inspected the cost trajectory by plotting the monthly cost over time conditioning on the duration of survival (i.e., death at 1, 2, 3, …6 years after diagnosis), and estimated the average monthly costs by care phases We further evaluated the average phase-specific monthly cost by tumor characteristics and treatment profiles. Cost was converted to 2017 US dollars [$] using Taiwanese consumer price index and purchasing power parity index.

RESULTS: We identified 32649 lung cancer patients. The cost trajectory exhibited a “U” shaped curve commonly observed in studies reporting costs of cancer care. The mean [95%CI] average monthly costs were 4683 [4649 ~4717], 2023 [2008 ~ 2038], and 6792 [6743 ~ 6842] for initial, continuing, and terminal phase, respectively. Detailed numbers by treatment and tumor characteristics will be reported in presentation.

CONCLUSIONS: We applied the phase of care costing approach to report the costs of lung cancer in Taiwan. This information will be useful for policy makers and future modeling studies.