Mean treatment cost of incident cases of penile cancer for privately insured patients in the United States.

PURPOSE: The aims of this study were to estimate the short-term cost of treating newly diagnosed penile cancer and determine the correlates of penile cancer treatment cost in the United States.

METHODS

The Truven MarketScan database was used to identify commercially insured patients with penile cancer newly diagnosed during 2011 to 2014. A control group without HPV-related cancer diagnosis was selected by matching to the case group by the propensity score method. Total healthcare costs in the 2 years after the cancer diagnosis index date were measured for each patient. The mean difference between case and control groups was considered the cancer-related cost. For patients without complete 2-year data, a generalized linear regression was performed to predict cost for censored months and identify predictors associated with monthly cost.

RESULTS

A total of 250 patients with newly diagnosed penile cancer and 250 matched controls were included in the study. The adjusted mean differential healthcare cost for penile cancer was $76,404 in the first 2 years. For the penile cancer group, cost peaked in month 1 at $10,202 and dropped substantially each month thereafter until month 7, when the cost was $4,295. After month 7, the monthly cost remained steady at $2,700 to $4,200.

CONCLUSIONS

The estimated average cost of penile cancer for insured patients in the United States was about $76,000 in the first 2 years after diagnosis. Monthly cost was directly related to age, length of follow-up, comorbidity score, and prediagnosis cost.