Financial Navigation Intervention Helps Cancer Patients

TOPLINE:

A financial navigation (FN) intervention significantly improved financial toxicity scores among patients with cancer, with mean scores increasing from 6.4 to 13.3. The intervention was highly accepted, with 96% of participants receiving financial assistance.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted the study at the North Carolina Basnight Cancer Hospital, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, focusing on patients diagnosed with cancer and experiencing financial hardship.
• They aimed to develop and test a novel, multiphase, patient-centered FN intervention integrated within existing care coordination services.
• A total of 50 patients were enrolled in the FN intervention after screening positive for financial distress using the Comprehensive Score for Financial Toxicity (COST) measure.
• The intervention included one-on-one consultations with trained financial navigators, initial comprehensive intake appointments, and follow-up appointments to discuss paperwork and application status.
• Participants were contacted every 2 weeks for follow-up appointments to assess progress toward financial assistance goals. The primary outcome was the pre- or post-intervention difference in COST scores, assessed using paired t-tests.

TAKEAWAY:

• The FN intervention significantly improved mean COST scores (mean difference, 6.9; P
• Uninsured patients showed a greater improvement in COST scores (mean difference, 8.6) than insured patients (mean difference, 5.8).
• The proportion of participants experiencing distress from not knowing their cancer costs decreased from 72% to 54% (P = .01).
• Ninety-six percent of participants received financial assistance, with 88% of benefit applications having been approved.

IN PRACTICE:

“A patient-centered FN fully integrated into an existing care coordination model can help to decrease the burden of cancer-related financial toxicity among patients with cancer experiencing financial distress. Further studies are needed to test FN interventions in various oncology settings and among targeted populations,” wrote the authors of the study.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Stephanie B. Wheeler, PhD, MPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was published online in October 2024 in JNCCN.

LIMITATIONS:

The study’s limited duration prevented follow-up on all levels of benefits acquired through the intervention, potentially underrepresenting the support services received. The results are specific to an academic medical center in a single state, limiting generalizability. The pre-post design may have introduced selection bias, as randomizing patients to a control condition was deemed infeasible. The sample size was insufficient to examine intervention effects across different patient populations. Cost ascertainment, a key component of intervention sustainability, was not within the scope of the current study.

DISCLOSURES:

Wheeler and Donald L. Rosenstein, MD, disclosed receiving institutional grant support from Pfizer. No other relevant conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.