Hospital-based or home-based administration of oncology drugs?

Objective: To investigate resource use and time investments of healthcare professionals, patients and their family and to compare healthcare and societal costs of one single hospital-based and one single home-based subcutaneous administration of trastuzumab in The Netherlands.
Method: We conducted a bottom-up micro-costing study. Patients diagnosed with HER2þ early or metastatic breast cancer were recruited in four Dutch hospitals. For healthcare costs, data were collected on drug use, consumables, use of healthcare facilities, time of healthcare professionals, and travelling distance of the nurse. For societal costs, data were collected on patient and family costs (including travelling expenses and time of informal caregivers) and productivity losses of paid and unpaid work.
Results: Societal costs of one single administration of SC trastuzumab were V1753 within the homebased and V1724 within the hospital-based setting. Drug costs of trastuzumab were identical in both settings (V1651). Healthcare costs were higher for home-based administration (V91 versus V47) mainly because of more time of healthcare professionals (110 versus 38 minutes). Costs for patient and family were, however, lower for home-based administration due to travelling expenses (V7 versus V0) and time of informal caregivers (V14 versus V4). Costs for productivity losses were similar for both settings.
Conclusions: Home-based subcutaneous administration of trastuzumab is more time consuming for healthcare professionals and therefore more costly than hospital-based administration. The total budget impact can be large considering that a large number of patients receive a large number of cycles of oncology treatments. If home-based administration is the way forward, novel approaches are crucial for ensuring efficiency of home-based care.