“How much does your medication cost?”: Assessing patient attitudes towards the costs of oncology medication to society.

Abstract

e23040 Background: Global oncology medication expenditure has increased rapidly in recent decades. In many countries, this cost is borne by the healthcare system rather than individual patients. Minimal research has investigated patient attitudes towards the societal costs of these medications. Our aims were to describe patient attitudes towards the societal costs of oncology medications and their desires to be better informed of these costs. Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire was developed by the study authors and distributed at two tertiary medical oncology outpatient departments in the South of Ireland from July 1 st to December 20 th , 2024. Questionnaire domains included demographics, attitudes towards societal oncology medication costs and cost reduction methods. Breast cancer patients (aged 18+ years) attending medical oncology services were included. Proportions, means and Chi-squared tests were used for data analysis. This study was approved by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the Cork Teaching Hospitals. Results: 321 patients were eligible for inclusion and 180 fully completed the questionnaire (56.1% response rate). Overall, 67.8% (N = 122) of patients found the costs presented in the questionnaire to be unacceptable. 92.2% (N = 166), 87.8% (N = 158) and 68.9% (N = 124) of participants found the costs of pembrolizumab, palbociclib and trastuzumab respectively to be unacceptable. 72.8% (N = 131) of patients indicated that they would like to be better informed about the societal costs of their cancer treatment and 81.1% (N = 146) of patients believed that reducing the costs of cancer treatment to society is important. There was a statistically significant difference in patient desires to be better informed of societal drug costs between those with early-stage breast cancer and those with metastatic disease (75.8% vs 47.4%, p = 0.009). There was no statistically significant difference in patient desires to be better informed of societal drug costs between those more than five years from their breast cancer diagnosis and those less than five years from their diagnosis. Conclusions: This study provides an insight into Irish breast cancer patient attitudes towards societal oncology drug costs. These findings indicate that Irish breast cancer patients find the societal costs of many commonly prescribed oncology medications to be unacceptable and that many of these patients have a desire to be better informed of these costs.