Utilization and cost of electronic brachytherapy by dermatologists from 2012 to 2015

Abstract

Electronic brachytherapy (EBT) garnered interest among dermatologists as a noninvasive treatment for keratinocyte carcinomas. While the magnitude of use and cost burden had not yet been quantified, this interest prompted an official statement from the American Academy of Dermatology supporting its use as secondary option in special circumstances, and led to changes to billing and coding for the procedure. Using provider level Medicare claims, this study demonstrates increased use of EBT between 2012 and 2015. We also showed that very few dermatologists utilized EBT, with only 39 dermatologists billing for EBT in 2015. This study documents that large scale policy changes were implemented in response to the practice behaviors of a small number of dermatologists, and provides information regarding the cost of EBT for consideration on how to best optimize its use in clinical practice.

Keywords:

• Electronic brachytherapy
• skin cancer
• cancer treatment
• health services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

Physician and other Suppliers Public Use File years 2012–2015 is available from: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Physician-and-Other-Supplier.html.

Medicare enrollment data are available from: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/CMSProgramStatistics/2015/2015_Enrollment.html. [cited 2018 Apr 30].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dermatology Foundation and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health under grants UL1TR002378 and KL2TR002381.