Lung cancer patients want the reimbursement of new drugs and the introduction of a system to lower the treatment cost, according to a survey.
Korea Cancer Society, a cancer patient support group, made these and other points while releasing the results of its survey on 286 lung cancer patients at a webinar on Tuesday.
Asked what should be done to improve the treatment environment, 67 percent of the lung cancer patients said they needed a “treatment cost reduction system” that they could directly benefit from. In addition, half of the respondents said they needed more information on the disease treatment, and 46 percent, more doctors and better care.
The lung cancer patients picked financial burden as the most difficult thing in treatment, saying the government should broaden health insurance coverage for non-reimbursable treatments. They also complained of emotional difficulties, like anxiety and fear due to lung cancer’s unpredictable prognosis.
The survey also found that most lung cancer patients collected information from unknown sources, signaling that it was important to deliver correct information.
Asked where the patients obtained information, the respondents said they got it from blogs and online cafes (79 percent), hospitals and doctors (61 percent), and online news articles (27 percent). Only 36 percent of the respondents were satisfied with the collected information.
Experts emphasized that the government should revise the health insurance system and raise patient access to new drugs.
Professor Ahn Jin-seok of hematology and oncology at Samsung Medical Center said some lung cancer patients outside the health insurance coverage have to spend about 5 million won ($4,178) for drug costs monthly. “Even if they can get health insurance, they have to meet particular conditions to get the benefit.”
He also said wrong healthcare facts should be corrected, noting that there are floods of information on the internet, but many are incorrect.
“As the internet is easily accessible, patients use it often. But those online sources are not reliable,” Ahn said. He noted that the most reliable information is provided by academic societies, government agencies, and hospitals.
“A lot of information on the websites of the National Cancer Information Center and the Korean Association for Lung Cancer is organized at a level that patients can understand easily.”
Professor Park Seong-yong of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at Severance Hospital said lung cancer patients often ask about irrelevant things like which mushrooms are good for lung cancer during a five-minute consultation with a doctor, and the doctor tends to ignore those questions.
He vowed to try to give the right information to patients.