Odds of surviving cancer drop drastically when credit score dips - Harvard Gazette

"While past studies have explored how cancer patients' financial health influenced their risk of mortality, new research digs in deeper by zeroing in on objective data: credit scores. It found that when a cancer patient's credit score drops - regardless of where it started pre-diagnosis - odds of survival decrease drastically. The findings were presented earlier this month at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress and have not been peer-reviewed."

"Previous research relied on self-reports of financial burden, according to study author Benjamin James, chief of general surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. While helpful for understanding patients' subjective experiences, such reports are prone to recall bias. It's incredibly difficult to gather objective measures, James says, because clinical and financial data are housed by separate institutions with different privacy rules."

"After years of negotiation, James and his team received deidentified clinical data from roughly 90,000 cancer patients in the Massachusetts Cancer Registry alongside financial information from a national credit bureau. The researchers adjusted for mortality-dependent variables, such as cancer type and stage, socioeconomic status, and race, and divided the credit scores into tiers (300-600, 600-660, 660-780, and 780-850). They found that patients who experienced a drop of two tiers within a year were 29 percent more likely to die."

Deidentified clinical data from roughly 90,000 cancer patients in the Massachusetts Cancer Registry were linked with financial information from a national credit bureau. Credit scores were categorized into tiers (300–600, 600–660, 660–780, 780–850) and analyses adjusted for cancer type and stage, socioeconomic status, and race. Patients who experienced a drop of two tiers within a year had a 29 percent higher likelihood of death. Patients with a two-tier drop within six months had a 63 percent higher likelihood of death. Credit scores provided an objective, time-varying marker of financial health that correlated strongly with mortality risk. Findings have not been peer-reviewed.

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