Globally, cancer is currently the second cause of death, with one out of every six deaths being caused by cancer. The disease describes an autonomous cell growth that fails to respond to growth regulatory signals. There are behavioral, dietary, and infections-related categories of cancers. Some of the risks in these categories include; alcohol, tobacco, high body mass index, low intake of vegetables and fruits, human papillomavirus (HPV), ionizing radiation, and hepatitis. Among all the risks, tobacco is the leading carcinogen, accounting for about twenty-two percent of all cancer deaths. Cancer management includes detection, treatment, and, if need be, palliative care. Reducing cancer burden would call for adopting healthier lifestyles while avoiding cancer risks and early screening, detection, and management of the disease. This essay expounds on the cost of cancer as an issue, then describes a logic model that proposes a solution to the cancer issue by suggesting the resources needed, strategies, stakeholders, and the expected outcomes after implementing the model.
Being the second most common cause of death qualifies cancer as a global issue for cancer patients and general public population health. Among the deaths due to cancer, approximately seventy percent occur among people of low and middle-class incomes who can’t afford quality healthcare in terms of diagnosis and treatment. Common challenges around the cancer discipline include late diagnosis, especially in low-income countries, and unaffordable costs of treatment (Averill et al., 2011). The late diagnosis is associated with high costs of diagnosis and lack of enough cancer screening and pathology facilities. Thus, the economic and health burden of cancer is increasing significantly and unaffordable in a terrific way (Dolgin, 2018). This financial burden is normally uncommon for different people; some are unable to continue with work that generates income for them, whereas others have dependants on top of their cancer attention expenses. A breakdown of why the cost of cancer is expensive includes; inpatient charges, surgeries cost, drug and consumables, diagnostic procedures, radiotherapy costs, screening costs, specialist services, general practice care, and costs incurred during hospital visits. There is a need to address these rising costs; otherwise, in the future, most people would not be in a position to meet the cost of cancer treatment.
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The high cost of treating cancer calls for logical proposals to solve the issue. Funding for the treatment of cancer is a necessity in solving the cancer treatment issue. As a matter of concern, cancer funding so far is minimal, and only a few non-governmental and non-profit organizations invest in cancer treatment and cancer research (Nardi et al., 2016). The government and insurance companies are the major sources of funds for cancer. With the rising occurrence of cancer cases, this funding is barely enough, and there is a need for more funding. Moreover, most citizens only afford cheap insurance premiums that scarcely cater to cancer treatment when the disease occurs (Silver et al., 2015). As a consequence, all the cost burden is left to the cancer patient, and for the majority, the costs are unaffordable. It is, therefore, necessary to incorporate more stakeholders in cancer funding. These stakeholders include; cancer advocacy groups, first aid charities, health charities, national professional associations, state professional organizations, granting agencies, hospices, political parties, UN agencies, and the business and private sectors. Harnessing funds from all these stakeholders will gather a substantial amount of money to support cancer treatment among patients. The funds should be used to reduce medication costs for all cancer patients.
The logical model also proposes the creation of more cancer centers. This is only possible when there is enough funding. Currently, there exist few cancer centers which are stretched out of their resources by the high number of cancer cases that are diagnosed every year. These institutions should only be dedicated to cancer diagnosis, treatment, palliative, and research. They will also be centers for spreading cancer awareness. Most available cancer centers deal with all types of cancers (Rajkumar, 2020). The existing centers are suffering a high ratio of patients to health care providers. For effectiveness, future cancer centers should be specialized in specific cancers. The cancer centers should be well funded with enough resources such as healthcare workers, oncologists, theatres, drugs, machines and equipment, and accommodation facilities. With specialized health care as that provided in cancer centers, a better prognosis is expected with most cancers. With a better prognosis, the cost of more hospital visits for palliative care will reduce.
There are organizational resources required for the effective solution of the cancer treatment issue. Lack of enough resources causes delays in diagnosis, treatments, and check-ups. Most patients’ conditions deteriorate during these long waiting periods without medical attention. For others, their cancers get to higher grades with a poor prognosis due to lack of timely access to health care for either screening, diagnosis, or treatment. Firstly, there should be established more hospitals that have all the required specialized facilities and resources, including drugs. The current state of hospitals is congestion. With more hospitals, admissions will be reduced, which allows for more attention to the admitted patients (Silver., 2015). There is also a need for more employees in the hospital. This will reduce the workload for healthcare workers who presently suffer burnouts resulting in absenteeism due to a large number of patients they attend. Also, there should be more hospices in communities for palliative care services. More hospices will ensure that patients with end-stage and chronic cancers receive quality care, especially in pain, sanitation, counseling, and nutrition management. There is also a proposal to fund and establish more cancer research stations (Bakhamis et al., 2018). Cancer is a highly volatile discipline with many dynamics that should be keenly studied and researched for more information. These research stations should also focus on studying cancer therapies with the aim of coming up with more targeted therapies for all possible cancers. More resources in this model are expected to produce positive outcomes such as patient satisfaction, improved cancer treatment outcomes, expansion of services, quality services, and promote sustainability of the hospitals.
In applying this logical model, there are strategies to help the goal of solving the cancer issue. To begin with, the cost of treating cancer should be reduced. Using the funds harnessed from the stakeholders in healthcare, all cancer treatment processes should be subsidized. Lowering the cost should be accompanied by harmonizing the costs of service in all hospitals. This will prevent the exploitation of patients or unequal services that are based on the cost that patients afford (Averill et al., 2011). There should be the eradication of the monopoly of services for both insurance covers for cancers and treatment. Monopolies perpetuate overpricing of insurance services as well as treatment services. As the main strategy, there should be mass education on the importance of early and frequent screening for cancers as part of routine health check-ups. This will ensure early intervention where the need is to prevent the detected cancers from advancing to higher unmanageable grades.
To solve the cancer issue maximally, the inputs of funding, collaboration among stakeholders, and the establishment of more hospitals and cancer centers are necessary. Some of the activities to follow these inputs include cancer awareness and screening and employing more health workers. The expected outputs are early screening and diagnosis of cancer, specialized health workers, and access to affordable and quality health care. The general outcomes of the logic model are timely access to healthcare, a reduction in overworking healthcare providers, patient satisfaction, reduced cost of cancer treatment, and better cancer prognosis.
References
Averill, R. F., Goldfield, N. I., & Hughes, J. S. (2011). Paying for outcomes, not performance: Lessons from the Medicare inpatient prospective payment system. Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety , 37 (4), 184-192.
Bakhamis, L., Matsumoto, T., Tran, M., Paul III, D. P., & Coustasse, A. (2018). Maryland's All-Payer Health Care System: A Light at the End of a Tunnel. The Health Care Manager , 37 (1), 11-17.
Dolgin, E. (2018). Bringing down the cost of cancer treatment. Nature , 555 (7695).
Nardi, E. A., Wolfson, J. A., Rosen, S. T., Diasio, R. B., Gerson, S. L., Parker, B. A., ... & Fitzgerald, C. L. (2016). Value, access, and cost of cancer care delivery at academic cancer centers. Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network , 14 (7), 837-847.
Rajkumar, S. V. (2020). The high cost of prescription drugs: causes and solutions.
Silver, J. K. (2015, February). Cancer prehabilitation and its role in improving health outcomes and reducing health care costs. In Seminars in oncology nursing (Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 13-30). WB Saunders.
Silver, J. K., Raj, V. S., Fu, J. B., Wisotzky, E. M., Smith, S. R., & Kirch, R. A. (2015). Cancer rehabilitation and palliative care: critical components in the delivery of high-quality oncology services. Supportive Care in Cancer , 23 (12), 3633-3643.
