The Direct Medical Care Costs Associated with Gastric Cancer in a Third-level Hospital in Iran

Background: Approximately 20 million individuals are afflicted with cancer worldwide. Gastric cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in the world today. The aim of this study was to evaluate the direct medical care costs of gastric cancer patients in a tertiary teaching hospital in Iran. Methods: The present study is descriptive-analytical, carried out in two main stages. In the first stage we designed a form based on valid international guidelines. The second step identified the costs of diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. To analyze the cost data, descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation were utilized. We used nonparametric statistical tests such as Mann-Whitney, Wilcoxon in SPSS 16 software for data analysis. Results: In this study, the records of 449 gastric cancer patients who had referred to Omid tertiary teaching hospital of Mashhad between the years 2005 and 2015 were studied. According to the results, the highest average costs were related to patient hospitalization costs. Based on the significance level of the Mann Whitney test, no remarkable difference could be seen in the total costs of metastatic and non-metastatic patients (P-value: P> 0.05). Conclusion: Organizations such as: insurance agencies, charities and financial institutions need to adopt new policies to reduce patients’ expenditures, remove financial barriers and prevent patients from facing catastrophic costs.