People who have survived cancer face significantly higher annual costs — including lost productivity and medical spending — as a result of their illnesses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report.
The difference for men and women can range from $1,330 to $4,187 more per year in annual costs for survivors compared with those with no cancer history. Researchers, who relied on data from the 2008 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, said their work shows a need for more health and employment intervention programs for cancer survivors.
One person who has firsthand experience with the toll a cancer diagnosis can have on a person’s work and productivity is Michael O’Neil, CEO of the Bethesda-based GetWellNetwork. He’s often told his story about the idea for his company, which specializes in making videos to educate patients about illness and hospital treatments, while laid up in bed from cancer surgery.
We chatted about the recent CDC findings and how it resonated with his experience:
What do you think of the findings? Frankly it’s the little things that add up. These things sound trivial, but if I’m going for treatment four days a week and I’m paying $7 a day for parking, and if I’m there for six hours so I end up buying expensive food each day I’m there, that adds up. Then, if I need an extra babysitter for my kids at home while I head to treatment, that’s a cost. Between chemo, you might have five blood tests a week, MRIs and CT scans. I think that’s really lost but some patients who can’t afford, say, the parking might decide not to get the MRI. Then the bulk of the population isn’t lucky enough to just take that time off from work. It’s those lost costs of the human burden that aren’t caught up when we think about the costs of therapies and medication with cancer.
What was your experience when it came to lost productivity? In all of these life-defining health moments, there is the behavioral health aspect. These things can wear people down and with all the tests, appointments and anxiety, there is that loss in productivity. When people go through chemo, they all have their little ways how their minds or bodies would respond to those chemo treatments. … For me, I would order a plain Domino’s pizza, eat the entire thing and then I would go to sleep for 14 hours. It just wears on you. Months after my treatment, the night sweats would return and I’d freak out thinking my cancer returned and head straight to the hospital. That comes with a cost.
So how were you able to begin working on a company in the midst of that? I’d been diagnosed with a tumor in my stomach and had to have a surgery where they essentially had to cut out half of my stomach. And then, I had to spend 11 days waiting for the pathology report to come back. And all I could do in the hospital was lay there all day staring at daytime TV. I kept thinking, if I could just have access to more information, I could spend my time learning about what I needed to do to get better. Literally, from my hospital, I began to draw on a napkin that idea that became this company.
It would seem you could say you ultimately were able to become more efficient as a result of your experience. Would you agree? When you have cancer, so much of your being goes into fighting cancer. But after my cancer treatment, my focus became spending whatever time I had, whether it be a month or 50 years, trying to do something about helping other patients. It’s amazing what purpose-driven work can do you your energy. It may be very different or much more difficult for other people but that is how it was for me.
