Cost of cancer to soar by two thirds in next decade

Britain will be facing a bill of more than £15bn a year to diagnose and treat cancer in ten years time, new research has suggested.

The £5.9bn increase will hit the NHS, private and voluntary sectors hard as Britain's population continues to age and may result in falling survival rates.

According to Bupa's Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment: A 2021 Projection report, the average cost of treating a cancer patient is set to hit £40,000, up from the current £30,000.

At present, the national Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) which decides whether drugs and procedures should be made generally available on the NHS does not recommend treatments which cost more than £20,000 to £30,000 per quality-adjusted life year.

If this process continues, it may mean more cancer treatments fall outside the NHS' funding scope.

The report also predicts a 20% growth in cancer rates by 2021 and estimated that the cost of cancer technologies and treatments will continue to grow, resulting in the overall cancer bill rising nearly two thirds (62%) from £9.4bn to £15.3bn a year.

And it calculated that the NHS would be hardest hit as it faced a £5.2bn increase in spending, followed by the private sector (£531m) and the voluntary sector (£131m).

Laing & Buisson, who conducted the research, identified that all sectors would struggle to find the increased budget due to the current economic conditions and concluded that a failure to respond may result in UK survival rates falling further behind other developing countries.

Three approaches were identified which the report said could help address the challenge:

• find new ways to address the cost of tests and treatments for cancer including ensure better national planning for availability of new drugs and technologies,

• change how and where cancer patients and survivors are treated, including making out-of-hospital care a standard choice for patients when appropriate,

• and enable patients to transfer between public and private facilities more easily.

Professor Karol Sikora, consultant oncologist at Hammersmith Hospital and medical director of Cancer Partners UK said: "This report shows that the costs of providing optimal care in Britain will rise by a staggering 62% over the next decade; ironically, the reasons behind this dramatic increase in costs are a cause for celebration.

"Cancer is predominantly a disease of older people and because of the advances of modern medicine, many more are living in good health well beyond retirement.

"When cancer does strike, we now have powerful new technologies available to gradually turn cancer into a chronic, controllable disease like diabetes.

"However, the rising numbers and the advent of innovation come with a hefty price tag," he added.

Dr Natalie-Jane Macdonald, managing director of Bupa Health and Wellbeing, continued: "It is not just about finding new resources to meet the challenge.

"The public, private and voluntary sectors will also need to reassess how and where cancer patients can best be treated to ensure that the available resources are spent in ways that can maintain or improve outcomes more efficiently.

"By looking at the cost of cancer over the next decade it is clear that, for all of us involved in healthcare, innovation will be necessary," she added.