Financial Toxicity in Healthcare Explained. Financial Toxicity is the negative impact of the cost of cancer treatment on patients.

Historically, Financial Toxicity has specifically related to cancer because cancer care is extremely expensive, but financial toxicity applies to expensive medical care for other conditions as well.

The signs of financial toxicity are 1) skipped medication doses to save money, 2) not filling prescriptions to save money, 3) borrowing money, 4) refinancing a home, 5) anxiety/depression and 6) cutting back spending on food/clothing.

An example of Financial Toxicity is breast cancer treatment. The overall cost increases with increasing breast cancer stage:
Stage I-II: $61-97K
Stage III: $84-159K
Stage IV: $89-182K

One person's Financial Toxicity is another organization's revenue and these organizations seek to maximize Financial Toxicity in the follow manners:
1) Hospitals by raising prices
2) Insurance Companies by denying appropriate care
3) PBMs by placing medications on a formulary tier with a higher out-of-pocket cost if the pharmaceutical company does not agree to pay them a higher commission
4) Pharmaceutical Companies by raising prices and creating 'Patent Thickets' that artificially extend the patent life of a medication beyond its intended duration.

The treatment for Financial Toxicity is 1) for patients to discuss financial difficulty with their clinician (i.e. doctor, NP, PA), 2) for clinicians to proactively ask patients about financial difficulty related to the medications, tests and treatments they prescribe, 3) applying to pharmaceutical company and hospital financial assistance programs and 4) contacting the HR department of the company that provides your insurance to ask them to explain your coverage.

Video about Cole: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/patric...

Sources:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/m...

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama...

https://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/b...

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