[Cost of medications in the oncology sector in the context of health economics].

The incidence of cancer has been increasing throughout Europe for decades. In 2003 in Austria, 36,689 people developed malignant tumours, that is 26.7% more than in 1986. In total, every third person will have cancer during their life-time. However the total number of people dying from cancer remains more or less constant. This is due to advances in diagnosis and treatment, almost one-third of the fall in mortality in the period from 1995-2003 being attributable to the use of modern anti-cancer medications. The cost factor related to modern cancer treatment is increasingly a subject for discussion. The aim of this research was to analyse hospital treatment costs and expenditure on medication in the oncology sector in a broader context. The intention was to show the costs of oncology in-patient treatment in relation to the overall Austrian hospital costs and health expenditure. Only in this way it is possible to establish whether the proportion spent on oncology is really disproportionately high. This analysis shows that despite increasing hospital admissions and the associated increase in treatment no cost explosion has taken place. The analysis of costs based on malignant tumours in relation to overall costs has shown that these are not disproportionately high even when taking the number of patients into account. Only 12.21% of cancer treatment costs are used for anti-cancer medications (ATC-classes L01 and L02). The proportion of anti-cancer medications related to the total hospital expenditure is approximately 1.04%. The costs of anti-cancer medication in the hospital sector have a ratio of 0.46% of health expenditure and 3.66% of Austrian expenditure on medications. This shows that based on the low proportion of the overall expenditure anti-cancer medications are not pushing up costs.