According to a report by the American Cancer Society, New York State needs to do more to give cancer patients better access to palliative care.
Bill Sherman, vice president for government relations for the Eastern Division of the Cancer Action Network, says many people believe palliative care is for the end of life, but it can benefit patients at any stage of a disease.
It brings together health and mental professionals and even clergy to help relieve a patient's symptoms, pain and stress.
Sherman said a recent study by the American Cancer Society shows that palliative care also lowers health care costs by reducing redundancies in treatment.
"On average, through palliative care, we can save between $1,700 and $10,000 per patient. An average academic medical center, like UR, can save $2.4 million per year using palliative care."
The American Cancer Society recommends that the New York State Department of Health develop a campaign to educate the public about palliative care and a patient’s rights to receive it.
The organization is also recommending palliative care training for health care providers and continued access to pain therapies, including prescription opioids that are at the center of a statewide and national addiction epidemic.
"What we need to achieve is a balance between protecting communities from drug addiction and abuse and also allowing cancer patients and other chronic disease patients, and their doctors, to be able to access those pain medications and therapies," Sherman said.
Cancer support and advocacy groups have lobbied for access to medical marijuana to help cancer patients manage the symptoms of their disease and its treatments. New York State’s medical marijuana program is scheduled to begin in 2016.
But the American Cancer Society has not taken a firm stand on the use of the drug.
"There are some studies out there that are encouraging. We're reviewing that,” Sherman said. “What we are not in favor of is using those therapies in the public eye. We don't want youth to be seeing that. And we don't want people smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes or anything else because we know that causes lung cancer."
New York State’s Compassionate Care Act does not allow patients to smoke marijuana, and does require that treatments using the drug take place at home or in a clinical setting.
Tobacco Cessation
The Cancer Society’s report released Thursday says New York State also falls short when it comes to the amount of money it spends to prevent smoking and to help people quit.
The current state budget includes $3.93 million on those programs. "And that sounds like a lot of money to people,” Sherman said. “But that's less than 20 percent of what the Centers for Disease Control recommends New York State spend, and that pales in comparison to what tobacco companies spent on advertising.”
Even though New York State has the fifth lowest adult smoking rate (14.5%) in the U.S. and the smoking rate among high school students has plunged by 42% over the last four years, Sherman says the use of electronic cigarettes is exploding among young people. The American Cancer Society estimates that rate has tripled in the past year.
"Nicotine is highly addictive and people need help; particularly those who are uninsured or living in poverty need the most help, and that's how the government can support people to quit, because they want to quit," he said.
