{"id":269499,"date":"2018-09-05T13:35:49","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T11:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=269499"},"modified":"2018-09-05T13:35:49","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T11:35:49","slug":"cancer-cases-have-doubled-in-the-last-8-years-these-are-the-most-common-types-according-to-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/269499\/cancer-cases-have-doubled-in-the-last-8-years-these-are-the-most-common-types-according-to-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancer cases have doubled in the last 8 years – these are the most common types, according to Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discovery recently released its Healthcare Claims tracker for the period between April 2017 – March 2018.<\/p>\n

Discovery’s Health Medical Scheme (DHMS) provides healthcare cover to over 2.7 million members which represents 31% of the total medical scheme population and 56% of the open scheme population.<\/p>\n

The majority of members reside in metropolitan areas such as Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria and 46% of the scheme’ss total members live in Gauteng, while 20% live in the Western Cape.<\/p>\n

Oncology claims<\/strong><\/p>\n

A large part of the report focuses specifically on Oncology claims, with Discovery paying out\u00a0R3.1 billion for oncology treatment over the time period.<\/p>\n

It noted that\u00a034,981\u00a0members were actively claiming for oncology treatment in the past 12 months, while a total of\u00a050,684\u00a0members were registered for the oncology benefit.<\/p>\n

“The number of members receiving treatment for cancer has increased by 99% since 2010<\/strong>, while the membership of the scheme has only increased by 24%,” Discovery said.<\/p>\n

“This indicates a combination of increasing incidence of cancer as well as anti-selection.”<\/p>\n

Also known as ‘adverse selection’,\u00a0anti-selection is the\u00a0tendency of individuals who suspect or know they are more likely than average to place a claim in the future – in this case, they believe (or know) that they are at greater a risk of cancer than others.<\/p>\n

Beyond Discovery’s data, stats from the National Cancer Registry shows that there were just under 57,000 cases<\/a><\/strong> of cancer reported in 2010. By 2014 this jumped to 75,000 cases<\/a><\/strong> – and by 2015 this had reached a reported 114,000 cases<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is a breakdown of Discovery’s data:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Top 10 types of Cancer<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Discovery, breast cancer is the most common cancer for the period with 11,683 member claimants.<\/p>\n

By comparison, thyroid cancer has seen the greatest increase in claimants, of 11.5%, from the previous period. Lung cancer was the most expensive to treat over the period, with a cost of R28,269 per member per month.<\/p>\n

However, Discovery’s data shows that there is no such thing as ‘cheap’ cancer treatment, with the lowest average cost – for prostate cancer – costing around\u00a0R7,892 a month.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At the other end of the scale,\u00a0Discovery outlined the top 10 highest individual member claims for cancer treatment – with one member claiming R3.3 million in their treatment of Lymphoma.<\/p>\n

Discovery also highlighted that members of various ages can require oncology treatment, with the second-highest individual member claim (R3.1 million) coming from a 13 year old who was also treating\u00a0Lymphoma.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are the most common types of cancer affecting men and women, according to cancer association, CANSA.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Read: Discovery inches closer to bank opening<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The number of members receiving treatment for cancer has increased by 99% since 2010, while the membership of the scheme has only increased by 24%, Discovery said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":57693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-269499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269499"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269529,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269499\/revisions\/269529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}