Costs of radiotherapy

Abstract

A systematic assessment of radiotherapy for cancer was conducted by The Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care (SBU) in 2001. The assessment included an overview of the capacity for radiotherapy in terms of infrastructure of cancer care and an estimation of the costs of radiotherapy in Sweden. A postal questionnaire distributed to all 16 centres of radiotherapy in Sweden showed the following results: In 2000 there were 57 accelerators with complementary equipment in operation, 24 of which had been installed 10 or more years ago earlier. The total cost of external radiation therapy was estimated at SEK 427 million in the year 2000, or approximately 5% of the estimated total cost of oncology care in Sweden. The total cost of brachytherapy was estimated at SEK 43 million or about one-tenth of that of external radiotherapy. The total cost of external radiotherapy has increased since the last inquiry (1991) by about 16% more than the general inflation in Sweden, but at the same time the volume of fractions has increased by about 37%. Thus, an increase in the efficiency of external radiotherapy, calculated per fraction, was achieved in the 1990s. At the department level, there was a clear correlation between cost of salaries and output of fractions of external radiotherapy, thus indicating the adaptation of manpower to the volume of patients. There was an even higher correlation between the number of accelerators and the volume of fractions of radiotherapy, which suggests the occurrence of certain economies of scale in Swedish external radiotherapy.