Patients with cancer who receive an intravenous therapy attend an infusion clinic — either at a dedicated outpatient infusion center, at a hospital, or at a community oncology clinic.1 Patients traditionally have received infused anticancer agents from their community oncology clinic, but this trend is changing. Increasingly, private oncology clinics are being acquired or enter into partnerships with hospitals.2 As a result, the site of care for infusions is shifting toward an outpatient hospital service.1
Insurers, however, may deny the use of certain infusions centers and send patients to an alternative center. Patients are likely confused about why this is occurring, and how these directives could influence their cost of care.
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Site-of-Care Costs
The cost of hospital-based care compared with community-based infusion centers has been discussed in the medical literature — multiple studies have shown that hospital-based infusion centers are more expensive and do not provide any additional benefits in quality of care.
A retrospective analysis of infused cancer therapy between 2008 and 2012 demonstrated that total health care costs were 15% higher among patients whose site of care was in the outpatient hospital setting compared with patients who received therapy in their physician’s office ($55,965 vs $48,439, respectively, P < .0001), despite patients in the outpatient hospital setting receiving fewer infusions and having a shorter duration of therapy.3There was no difference in the quality of the end-of-life care provided between the sites of care.
Similarly, a retrospective study of 18,740 patients who received intravenous chemotherapy or biologic therapy for metastatic solid tumors or hematologic malignancies demonstrated that all-cause costs and cancer-related health care costs were substantially higher in patients who received care in the hospital outpatient setting compared with those who received their care from their physician offices, with no difference in quality-of-care metrics.4
