Evaluation of Operation of Proton Therapy Center
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Liu, Hon-Man
Abstract
Recently, cancer has become one of most important diseases and also the first leading cause of death in Taiwan. Though there are many newly developed medication and implementation of many innovative treatments, radiotherapy still play an important role in cancer treatment. Damage to normal tissue and cannot put all the energy into the lesions are the major disadvantages of conventional radiotherapy. These make radiotherapy can cause sequelae and recurrence occasionally. Proton therapy has the advantage over conventional radiotherapy to avoid the damage of normal tissue during the treatment and put almost all the energy to the designed lesion location. However, it is very expensive to build an integrate proton treatment system and cost of each proton treatment is much higher than the conventional radiotherapy.
In the next few years, two proton treatment centers will start to operate. In this research, we try to analysis the operation of T proton treatment center which is characterized by the aspect of public center donated by private funds, run by government owned university, and without local reference.
In the first part of this study, the history of proton treatment, its physical and biological basis in treatment of cancer, the current status of proton therapy in the world, and the indication of proton treatment were briefly reviewed.
A private fund donated all the major hardware to the T proton treatment center, but this fix cost was closely related to operation cost in the future, so the construction cost and equipment cost was also calculated according to references. All the calculation will be set upon a presumption that the T proton treatment center will have 3 gantries and 2 fixed beam treatment rooms and costs about NT$ 5,000,000,000 (construction cost + equipment cost). In the terms of operation cost, we discussed the personnel cost, cost of utilization, cost of management and maintenance, deprivation, cost of operation and administration according to the traditional way in T hospital. Three years after the installation, the total operation cost will be rising suddenly due to cost of management and maintenance.
Most of all, the cost of fraction in treatment is the key factor. In the USA and Europe, the unit of reimbursement in proton treatment is “fraction”. In different disease and different location, the use of proton therapy will be different. This means the number of fraction of each treatment in different patient will be not the same. One patient may receive one fraction (stereotactic radiosurgery) to more than 40 fractions in one course of proton treatment. Even, the number of portal is different in each fraction also.
In this study, the assumption is a total of 25 fractions will be averagely delivered to every patient. The important factors that impact the fraction are working hours, start-up and turn-down time, nominal treatment time(time for preparation and using proton beam in each fraction). The sensitivity analysis was done for these factors too. Working hours is the key factor effect the cost of fraction.
Regarding to revenue, fraction is also the unit of income. With reference to the data from USA, Japan, and Swiss and the ratio of payment to stereotactic radiosurgery and proton treatment in these 3 countries, the reimbursement of each fraction can be predict to be NT$20,928. With all these results, we can evaluate the operational financials in NTU proton treatment center. Sensitivity analysis of net present value and IRR with the variants such as maturity of person performance, nominal treatment time, and working hours were also performed.
Working hours and nominal treatment time are the two key factors to net present value and IRR. If the schedule is working 6 days a week and 16 hours a day, that will be a remarkable increase in both values as compare to a schedule of working 5 days a week and 12 hours a day. The percentile of change is about 3%-5% in the variant of maturity of person performance, and it is about 7% change in NPV but minimum in IRR if the reimbursement decreased from NT$20,000 to NT$15,000.
The study found that the new cancer patient that can be the candidates using proton therapy is far more than the capacity of the 2 new proton treatment centers in Taiwan. If T proton treatment center can provide enough working hours for treatment, accelerate the maturity of staffs, the fully operation of whole system can be foreseen in a short time. However, this also acquires intelligent scheduling to relief the problem of patient-mixed. Early appointment of key leading person such as director and medical physicists is also important. The concept of semi-fixed cost is important in conventional radiotherapy as well as proton treatment center. Other factors such as open system, governmental policy, the pricing of C hospital, the support from private funds are also discussed. Finally, the possibility of international medicine is also mentioned briefly.
Subjects
Proton treatment
cancer
cost
revenue
operation
break-even point
SDGs
Type
thesis
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