Willingness-to-pay for cancer treatment and outcome: a systematic review

Understanding patient preferences in cancer management is essential for shared decision-making. Patient or societal willingness-to-pay (WTP) for desired outcomes in cancer management represents their preferences and values of these outcomes.

The aim of this systematic review is to critically evaluate how current literature has addressed WTP in relation to cancer treatment and achievement of outcomes.

Seven databases were searched from inception until 2 March 2021 to include studies with primary data of WTP values for cancer treatments or achievement of outcomes that were elicited using stated preference methods.

Fifty-four studies were included in this review. All studies were published after year 2000 and more than 90% of the studies were conducted in high-income countries. Sample size of the studies ranged from 35 to 2040, with patient being the most studied population. There was a near even distribution between studies using contingent valuation and discrete choice experiment. Based on the included studies, the highest WTP values were for a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) ($11,498-$589,822), followed by 1-year survival ($3-$198,576), quality of life (QoL) improvement ($5531-$139,499), and pain reduction ($79-$94,662). Current empirical evidence suggested that improvement in QoL and pain reduction had comparable weights to survival in cancer management.

This systematic review provides a summary on stated preference studies that elicited patient preferences via WTP and summarised their respective values. Respondents in this review had comparable WTP for 1-year survival and QoL, suggesting that improvement in QoL should be emphasised together with survival in cancer management.