Patient Journey, Clinical and Epidemiological Characterization, Health Resource Utilization and Biomarkers in Early-stage Lung Cancer in Colombia

Cancer is a high-cost disease that generates an important economic impact on healthcare systems. It is possible that system fragmentation can potentially be associated to poorer outcomes for these patients. Colombia has an individual insurance-based system with two affiliation regimes:

1. contributory regimen based in a payroll system covering all individuals with payment capacity and their relatives
2. subsidized regimen aimed at individuals without payment capacity. Currently, the insurance coverage is over 99% in the country. The insurance is publicly funded but administered by health insurance companies, most of them private. There is freedom of choice for the insurer, but the health insurance companies define the network of health care providers for their affiliates. Available data indicates significant disparities in lung cancer mortality by socioeconomic condition in Colombia . In addition, a recent report shows that lung cancer imposes a significant economic burden on the Colombian health system and the reported costs of lung cancer care are lower in the subsidized regimen, suggesting relevant differences in patterns of cancer care between insurance regimes despite all patients are entitled to a unique health benefit package Furthermore, some reports show how the fragmentation of cancer care even within the same affiliation regimen is frequent in Colombia having effect on timeliness and quality of medical care and leading to poor health outcomes and the need of additional lines of treatment with associated higher cost as in the case of cancer care. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that early detection efforts and screening campaigns can have a positive pharmacoeconomic effect, mostly in association with the possibility to offer potentially curative interventions. Furthermore, integrated management of patients leads to improved overall survival However, we currently do not have local data to eventually support health system interventions around these measures, particularly in Early-Stages .