Impact of treatment regimen on acute care use during and after adjuvant chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer

Purpose: The Oncology Care Model was developed, in part, to reduce acute care use during the 6 months after chemotherapy initiation. However, little is known about the impact of chemotherapy regimen on acute care needs, or about later acute care. We sought to assess acute care use over 2 years in patients receiving four contemporary adjuvant chemotherapy regimens for breast cancer. Methods: Administrative claims data from a large U.S. commercial insurance database (OptumLabs Data Warehouse) were used to retrospectively identify women with early-stage breast cancer who received adjuvant doxorubicin-cyclophosphamide (AC), AC followed or preceded by docetaxel or paclitaxel (AC-T), AC concurrent with docetaxel or paclitaxel (TAC), or docetaxel-cyclophosphamide (TC) between 2008 and 2014. Rates of hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits that did not lead to hospitalizations were compared during four sequential 6-month periods among recipients of these four regimens using negative binomial regression (TC = reference). Results: We identified 8621 eligible patients, 87.2% younger than 65. Over 6 months, 11.9% were hospitalized and 17.1% had ED visits. Over 24 months, 17.9% were hospitalized and 28.3% visited the ED. Adjusted rates of hospitalizations/100 patients were significantly higher in AC-T and TAC compared to TC recipients in the first 6 months (14.9, 21.9, and 11.3, respectively, p < 0.001). There were no hospitalization rate differences among regimens later. ED visit rates did not differ significantly by regimen during any 6-month period. Conclusion: Higher rates of hospitalizations in recipients of AC-T and TAC were restricted to the chemotherapy administration period, and did not persist afterwards.