With advances in treatment and screening for earlier detection, oncologists have improved cancer survival rates dramatically. That is excellent news, but the surging number of survivors means it is increasingly important for providers to focus more diligently on what patients need to thrive after treatment.
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.
