A study finds more than two-fold differences between counties with the lowest and highest rates of surgery for patients with early stage lung cancer, with socioeconomic and healthcare delivery factors contributing to the gap. The study appears in Chest.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
