Dr. Pennell on the Cost Effectiveness of NGS in NSCLC

Nathan A. Pennell, MD, PhD, director, Lung Cancer Medical Oncology Program, Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, discusses the cost-effectiveness of next-generation sequencing (NGS) for patients with metastatic non—small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

A study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting reported that using NGS in the screening of patients with metastatic NSCLC can save Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services payers $1.3 million to $2.1 million. The economic impact of NGS compared with sequential single-gene testing modalities to detect genomic alterations in patients with metastatic NSCLC was tested using a decision analytic model. Included in the study were 1 million hypothetical newly diagnosed patients with Medicare and commercial health plans.

Pennell says that although it costs more to pay for a NGS test than a single-gene EGFR test, it is less expensive to pay for a single NGS test than multiple gene panel tests covering EGFR, ALK, ROS1, and BRAF mutations. Ordering 1 NGS test is more cost effective than multiple separate single-gene tests, and it covers all the same genes, and potentially more.