TOPLINE:

Patients with cancer enrolled in a novel digital support registry requested an average of $5921 per patient in financial assistance, with housing needs comprising 59% of the total $1.32 million requested. The platform revealed that 95% of all requests were financial, distributed across housing (33%), daily life (31%), health (18%), and transportation (18%) domains.

METHODOLOGY:

• The majority of patients with cancer experience reduced household income and savings depletion, creating a cycle of financial hardship.
• Researchers conducted a retrospective evaluation of patients with cancer at two tertiary care cancer centers in New York and Florida who enrolled in the “We’re in This Together” (WiTT) Support Registry between January and December 2023.
• Analysis included patient requests for assistance across four primary domains: daily life, housing, health, and transportation, with multiple associated subcategories for each domain.
• Participants self-reported data on age, sex, ethnicity, cancer diagnosis, and stage, after which they indicated desired financial and nonfinancial support needs.
• Metropolitan tertiary care centers were specifically selected for their ethnically-diverse patient populations with varied socioeconomic backgrounds.

TAKEAWAY:

• A total of 223 patients with cancer registered 2411 requests for assistance, with breast cancer (25%), brain cancer (11%), lung cancer (7%), and head and neck cancers (4%) being the most common diagnoses in these patients.
• Patient demographics showed 65% were women, with Hispanic White (54%), non-Hispanic White (26%), Black (14%), Asian (4%), and other (3%) ethnicities represented.
• Of all requests, 95% were financial and 5% nonfinancial, with housing (33%), daily life (31%), health (18%), and transportation (18%) being the primary domains.
• The total financial assistance requested was $1,320,454, averaging $5921 per patient, with housing needs comprising the largest portion at 59% of total requests.

IN PRACTICE:

“Asa social platform that combines elements from a gift registry, crowdsourcing, and FinTech domains, the WiTT program allows patients to ask for assistance without the influence of medical care team members…. [Having] the ability to more accurately identify individual patient needs during their cancer journey may enable healthcare organizations to anticipate and provide more focused support and resources and thereby help to reduce disparities and improve outcome,” the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by J. Isabelle Choi, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. It was published online in Supportive Care in Cancer.

LIMITATIONS:

The retrospective nature of the study introduced inherent limitations and potential sources of bias. Only patients who voluntarily elected to participate in the WiTT Support Registry were included, potentially missing different needs distributions among nonparticipants. The platform’s online nature requires baseline technology access and familiarity, which may have led to the exclusion of certain patient populations. Additionally, the study’s focus on two metropolitan centers may limit generalizability to smaller cities or different geographic regions.

DISCLOSURES:

Minesh P. Mehta, PhD, disclosed being a consultant for Telix, Kazia, Novocure, Zap, Xoft, and Karyopharm; serving on the Mevion’s Technological Advisory Board; and holding stocks in Chimerix previously. The remaining authors reported having no relevant conflicts of interest.

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