Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston found that financial fallout can follow patients with cancer and their families in the form of bankruptcy, lower credit scores, and other forms of financial challenges years after a cancer diagnosis.
Benjamin C. James, MD, FACS, chief of general surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, led research that followed the credit scores and other financial metrics of patients enrolled in the Massachusetts Cancer Registry (MCR). The results of these studies are being presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2024 in San Francisco, California.
The first study included 99,175 people who had a cancer diagnosis from 2010 through 2019 and 188,875 non-cancer patients to serve as a control. Researchers matched patient registry data with Experian credit bureau data to evaluate objective financial markers of financial toxicity.
Patients with cancer had higher rates in total debt collections, medical collections, and bankruptcies. Cancer patients are nearly 5 times more likely to experience bankruptcy. The cancer patients also had average credit scores nearly 80 points lower.
The second study used a sample of 7,227 patients with colorectal cancer and identified a number of factors that correlated with lower credit scores. For example, patients who had only radiation as treatment had credit scores 62 points lower than those who had only surgery, which was used as the “standard” group to compare to. Those who had chemotherapy had credit scores 14 points lower than those with surgery alone. For those who had combination treatments, the difference in credit scores compared with surgery alone varied from 2.59 points higher with surgery and chemoradiation to 15.92 points lower for surgery and radiation.
The study also found that declines in credit scores are larger for people with bladder, liver, lung, and colorectal cancers, and persist for up to 9.5 years after diagnosis. However, Dr. James noted that the researchers did not directly correlate cancer prognosis with financial toxicity, but that some more aggressive cancers actually have less financial toxicity than cancers with a good prognosis.
