# Estimating the Cost Trajectories and Projecting the Cost of Cancer Care in the United States: Methodology and Application

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF TX MD ANDERSON CAN CTR · 2022 · $358,680

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Accurate projection of the costs of cancer care in the United States on a regular basis is
critically important for decision makers to understand the economic impact of cancer and to
develop and assess cost containment policies and interventions. We propose to systematically
develop new methodology for cost estimation and projection that addresses analytical
challenges in the phase-of-care costing method, which was developed more than two decades
ago and has since been adopted by the National Cancer Institute in its periodic cost reporting.
Our methodology includes new methods to (a) model the longitudinal cost trajectories without
artificial partitioning of initial, continuing, and terminal care phases, (b) identify more comparable
matched control cohort in the estimation of net cost attributable to cancer, (c) to extrapolate the
cost trajectories estimated from SEER-Medicare database to the general United States
population and validate the extrapolation algorithm for the purpose of projecting national cancer
care costs. We will apply the proposed methods to SEER-Medicare data to project the costs of
the top five most costly cancers (breast, colorectal, lung, prostate, and lymphoma), plus
leukemia, in the United States between 2020 and 2030. User-friendly software will be developed
and disseminated for routine use.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10434897
- **Project number:** 5R01CA225646-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TX MD ANDERSON CAN CTR
- **Principal Investigator:** Liang Li
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $358,680
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-07-05 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10434897

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10434897, Estimating the Cost Trajectories and Projecting the Cost of Cancer Care in the United States: Methodology and Application (5R01CA225646-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10434897. Licensed CC0.

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