Awardee-specific economic costs of providing cancer screening and health promotional services to medically underserved women eligible in the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.

objectivesTo estimate awardee-specific costs of delivering breast and cervical cancer screening services in their jurisdiction and to assess potential variation in the cost of key activities across awardees.

methodsWe developed the cost assessment tool to collect resource use and cost data from the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program awardees for 3 years between 2006 and 2010 and generated activity-based cost estimates. We estimated awardee-specific cost per woman served for all activities, clinical screening delivery services, screening promotion interventions, and overarching program support activities.

resultsThe total cost per woman served by the awardees varied greatly from $205 (10th percentile) to $499 (90th percentile). Differences in the average (median) cost per person served for clinical services, health promotion interventions, and overarching support activities ranged from $51 to $125.

conclusionsThe cost per woman served varied across awardee and likely reflected underlying differences across awardees in terms of screening infrastructure, population served, and barriers to screening uptake. Collecting information on contextual factors at the awardee, health system, provider, and individual levels may assist in understanding this variation in cost.