Health Care Cost | Breast Cancer Evaluation Measures

Health care costs measures for breast cancer screening^1-5

In contrast with the worker productivity costs described above, health care costs are measures of the direct medical expenses of providing employee health care and preventive health programs.

Baseline  

• Determine costs and use for health care such as outpatient visits, screening, diagnostic procedures (e.g., biopsies), one-on-one education counseling, hospitalizations, and treatment (e.g., surgery or chemotherapy) for breast cancer related illness and disability
• Determine the health care use and costs of program participants before education and other programs are initiated and after operation of these programs

Process

• Periodic repeats of baseline measures

Outcome

• Assess changes in health care use and costs from baseline
• Compare health care use and costs of program participants before education and other programs are initiated and after operation of these programs
• Breast cancer screening is a valuable detection tool that can identify breast cancer at an early stage when treatment is more effective and less expensive. As screening rates improve, detection of breast cancers will show an early overall increase. Over the long term, the rates of detection of early stage tumors should increase while detection of tumors already in their late stages should decrease
• Breast cancer diagnosis rates may increase in the short term due to improved screening. Changes in costs for breast cancer treatment are long term measures and may not occur for several years  
• Decreases in breast cancer death rates may not occur for several years