Life cycle cost analysis for cancer patients at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Healthcare costs can be astronomical when it comes to cancer treatment. Given the steep costs of treatment, it is expected for a patient to learn about the cost estimates before starting the treatment process. Having this information would be immensely helpful for the patient to avoid debt and the debt related stress at the end of the treatment cycle. This would also help MD Anderson Cancer Center to improve patient experience and payer performance. Therefore, it is crucial for the Cancer Center to have a robust analytical tool to predict the stages and costs of treatment for a given set of conditions and patient attributes. By analyzing the various factors driving the costs and the attributes affecting the condition of the patient, the treatment costs can be predicted more accurately than the state of the art. This paper analyzes the various factors affecting the costs by measuring the variance of expenses at different stages of treatment. Further, the condition of the patient was modelled as a stochastic process to have an in-depth knowledge of the likelihood of the patient’s condition getting better or worse given the stage at which the patient entered the system.