Yale Cardiovascular Medicine Grand Rounds "Financial Toxicity with Cardiovascular Disease in US Elephant in the Room"

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) has posed an increasing burden on Americans and the United States healthcare system for decades with substantial economic impact.

The concerns to patients are particularly relevant in recent years, with a growing trend of shifting costs of treatment expenses to patients in various forms, such as high deductibles, copays, and coinsurance. However to date there has been little focus on the challenge of “financial toxicity” which encapsulates the deleterious impact of healthcare expenditures for patients. These includes the economic burden posed by healthcare costs, but also the unintended consequences it creates in form of barriers to necessary medical care, quality of life as well tradeoffs related to non‐health–related necessities.

There is an urgent necessity to understand and describe the scope and domains of financial toxicity, the instruments that measure various facets of healthcare‐related to expenditures by the patient, as well as potential solutions for clinicians to apply them in their medical practice to mitigate the burden and consequences of out‐of‐pocket costs for ASCVD patients and their families.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the Scope and Burden of Financial Toxicity Among Patients with Cardiovascular Disease.
• Discuss patient characteristics and unintended consequences associated with financial toxicity.
• Highlight next steps to mitigate and overcome the adversity related to financial hardship among patients with CVD.