Re: Chemotherapy Drug Concession

Obviously, a patient wants a physician's decision to be based on experience, clinical information, new basic Science insights, etc., not on how much money the doctor gets to keep. If you are a patient, you should know if there are any financial incentives at work in determining what cancer drugs you are being prescribed.

Ask your oncologist: Why are you prescribing these drugs? What is their published efficacy and toxicity in other patients with the same cancer? Do you have any research or financial interests in prescribing these drugs? Are these drugs a profit center for you in respect to reimbursement? A trusting partnership between doctor and patient that facilitates informed consent is the goal for many proactive patients. Such a partnership, however, may require an understanding of all the factors that lead to a treatment recommendation.

In light of the precious little in the way of guidance from clinical trials with respect to best empiric therapy (where the only thing that has been proven to correlate with treatment decisions is reimbursement to the prescribing oncologist), and the importance of basing cancer treatment at least in part on patient preferences, it is entirely reasonable to support judicious application of laboratory tests which have been well characterized with respect to test accuracy.