perhaps in an ideal world, the ministry of health would pay for all cancer treatments, with no criteria or authorization needed. until that day, our canadian healthcare system will be complicated and fragmented for patients to navigate.
in the past few decades, there has been a plethora of new cancer drugs — highly specialized drugs, new classes of drugs, new targeted therapies. often, they’re given together in combination of two or three. this has also meant an increase in patient support programs (psps) that support these drugs. in fact there are now dozens of drug manufacturer psps available to provide various services for patients.
and since cancer drugs need approval for usage by public and private payors, the paperwork associated with these approvals — which would take physicians hours per week — come at a high cost. fortunately, this is taken on by dans, allowing them to spend more time seeing more patients.
the reality is oncologists don’t know the cost of every treatment. they don’t know all the programs available to every patient. they don’t know what a patient’s private drug plan will pay for — and they don’t need to know if there is a dan available in their centre. on a multidisciplinary healthcare team, everyone has an expertise: the pharmacist, the nurse, the dietitian, and the social worker, among others, all have specific areas of knowledge, providing better patient care as a unit. just like a patient would see their pharmacist to understand how to take their medication and if it will interact with other medications, they should be able to go to see a dan to understand the financial implications of their treatment, get financial assistance and also make sure they’re paying the appropriate amount.
how to contact a dan