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WASHINGTON – TheGeorge Washington University Medical Center received a $1.17 million grant over three years from the National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant Program (RO1) to help fill the gap of information on the distribution of prices for cancer care. The research will seek to inform patients, consumers, and third-party payers about the trade-offs in making health care choices on the basis of price or in terms of potential quality of care. The primary investigator on the grant is Dr. Avi Dor, professor of Health Policy and Economics in the Department of Health Policy in the School of Public Health and Health Services. 

Dr. Dor noted, “This is an opportunity for us to identify the dispersion of prices, the impact of insurance on prices, and the role of outcomes aggregated to the level of hospital, by breaking down the pricing of surgical procedures for cancer treatment.”  Through the grant, Dr. Dor will examine the relationship between pricing and outcomes of three procedures, including colectomy (colon resection), lung surgery (resection), and a uterine (endometrial) hysterectomy, when associated with the diagnosis of colorectal, lung, and uterine cancers.