Economic Evaluation of Sarcoma Patients Management in France

The aim of this project is to (1) evaluate the efficiency of early management of sarcoma patients by the sarcoma referral network (NETSARC) vs. outside the network; (2) measure the budgetary impact of the generalization of the most cost-effective strategy across the country; (3) identify the organizational and financial constraints likely to hinder the generalization of the most cost-effective strategy and propose solutions, and finally (4) analyse the budgetary impact of a generalization of sarcoma patient care by the reference network by integrating the organizational and financial solutions proposed. The study relies on an exhaustive national cohort of all sarcoma patients who underwent primary tumor surgery for the year 2013. Patients will be allocated to four distinct strategies, each representing a different management of sarcoma patients who had a sarcoma-specialized multidisciplinary tumor board (MDTB) before the initial surgery and complete initial management in the network (strategy 1); patients who had a sarcoma-specialized MDTB before the initial surgery and initial management outside the network (strategy 2); patients who had a sarcoma-specialized MDTB after initial surgery and initial management outside the network (strategy 3); patients who had an initial management outside the network, without sarcoma-specialized MDTB neither before nor after the initial surgery (strategy 4). Matching of the National Health Data System (SNDS) and the NETSARC databases made it possible to include 2431 patients in the study. These databases will allow to obtain information on patients, estimate overall survival and identify healthcare consumption, which will be useful in achieving study's objectives.