Costs of non-metastatic prostate cancer treatment among privately insured men in the United States

Background: Our objective was to quantify the cumulative total and out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for 3 non-metastatic prostate cancer treatment modalities: radiation, surgery, and conservative management at intervals of 1-, 3-, and 5-years post-diagnosis. We predicted these cumulative costs for a typical patient to improve cost transparency, facilitate conversations about potential costs, and to help advance non-metastatic prostate cancer cost evaluation. Methods: We used Merative™ MarketScan® Commercial Database data from 2007–2020. The cumulative total costs evaluated from the healthcare sector perspective were patient, clinician, and system/facility costs. We used descriptive statistics to summarize the sociodemographic characteristics of the cohort and a multivariable regression model to estimate the association between each treatment option (radiation, surgery, conservative management) and costs with inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to account for potential selection bias. We then predicted total and OOP costs defined by sample mode characteristics. Results: This cohort included 74,324 patients. Cumulative total and OOP costs were significantly higher for radiation (p