How Financial Toxicity Screening Can Be Incorporated Into Everyday Healthcare in America

Laila Gharzai, M.D., LLM, from the Department of Radiation Oncology at Northwestern University says conversations about financial toxicity are easier to have with breast cancer patients because of their large population size and the fact that many of them are receive treatment for a long time, leading to higher costs and more recovery time.

Gharzai said this can be applied to all healthcare if the right steps are taken.

“I think one of our first steps of the community is going to be figuring out what is the right question to ask,” Gharzai said in an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive. “We need to look at identifying how exactly we want to screen and then figure out how often we actually want to be doing this as a screening question, versus having a person going in and touching base with patients as well.”

Gharzai and her colleagues recently published the results of their study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The research team sent an anonymous survey to email subscribers of a nationwide breast cancer–specific philanthropic organization The Pink Fund, asking about financial toxicity screening preferences. Results revealed that patients preferred financial screening conversations be initiated by their providers (83%), happen early (at diagnosis, 45%; when treatment is selected, 37%) and once a month (36%).