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.