Agreement on Understanding: a new way to finance the treatment of cancer patients.
On 26/02/2007, Jiri Vorlicek (President of the Czech Society for Oncology) and Pavel Horak (Director-General of the General Health Insurance Office) concluded the so-called "Agreement on Understanding", which is regarded as a historical milestone in the Czech oncology. Jiri Vorlicek assumes that other health insurance offices will join this initiative soon.
According to this agreement, expensive treatment will be provided to any cancer patient who needs it. In compliance with the principle of "right treatment to the right patient", the costly treatment will be provided to those patients who can benefit most from it. One of 18 Comprehensive Cancer Centres will take over the treatment of those patients, while the General Health Insurance Office will pay the treatment with the most effective drugs for each specific patient – something that small hospitals could not afford for financial reasons. The system of fixed payment tariffs, which has been implemented so far, has brought a lot of complications to cancer patients, as the health care facilities have been handing those patients over, worrying about the expensive treatment.
The Czech Society for Oncology has presented a set of data to the General Health Insurance Office, giving an overview about some types of cancer in the Czech population, as well as estimations for the year 2007 (specifically, breast carcinoma, colorectal carcinoma and non-small cell lung cancer). This analysis has been performed by a team of specialists from the Institute of Biostatistics and Analyses (IBA), which have used the data from the National Cancer Registry, demographic data of the Czech population and the Death Registry; based on known scenarios of cancer treatment, this team has estimated numbers of patients which would be treated with a specific therapy in 2007.
1. 3. 2007 Administrator
