Bladder Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment: Barriers to Timely Response
What are the main barriers bladder cancer patients face in accessing timely diagnosis and treatment? Dr. Randy Vince from University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center sheds light on how socioeconomic factors such as insurance access, lack of primary care, and limited health literacy contribute to delays in diagnosis and care. Learn more about Dr. Randy Vince.
[ACT]IVATION TIP
“So, for patients who have financial difficulties when it comes to obtaining health insurance, you know, one of the things that we’ve seen here locally that a lot of patients were not aware of is you can actually contact your local board of health, whether it’s at the county level or a local municipality level, and they have resources available for you based off of your, you know, where you are in terms of your economic circumstance. The next thing I would say is for all patients, you know, and this is across the board, I always tell patients to trust your body, because no one knows your body better than you do. And so if you notice different changes in your body, when it comes down to things like increased urination or the frequency of urination, blood in your urine, these are things that you should seek medical advice or medical attention for immediately.”
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
Dr. Vince, what are the main barriers bladder cancer patients face in accessing timely diagnosis and treatment?
Dr. Randy Vince:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. So, there are major barriers that are largely related to socioeconomic factors. We see this in healthcare broadly, but specifically within bladder cancer patients. So some examples of those things would be insurance access, access to primary care physicians. Because we know that there are substantial amount, substantial number of the population who don’t have a primary care physician, as well as health literacy or differences in health literacy. And then many of these factors are actually interconnected.
So, I say that to say that, you know, for example, patients who are facing financial insecurity, which we know are disproportionately Black and Brown patients are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured, and they’re less likely to receive preventative medicine, medical care from a primary care provider. And so, as a result, when you have these health issues arise, there could be limited access to the necessary care, as well as a lack of awareness about the available treatment options. So, all of these things kind of combine or stack on top of each other, if you will, when it comes to the barriers for bladder cancer patients, when it comes to accessing timely diagnosis and treatment.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay, thank you. And do you happen to have an [ACT]IVATION tip for that question?
Dr. Randy Vince:
Yes. So, for patients who first, when we talked about financial insecurity. So, for patients who have financial difficulties when it comes to obtaining health insurance, you know, one of the things that we’ve seen here locally that a lot of patients were not aware of is you can actually contact your local board of health, whether it’s at the county level or a local municipality level, and they have resources available for you based off of where you are in terms of your economic circumstance.
The next thing I would say is for all patients, and this is across the board, I always tell patients to trust your body, because no one knows your body better than you do. And so if you notice different changes in your body, when it comes down to things like increased urination or the frequency of urination, blood in your urine, these are things that you should seek medical advice or medical attention for immediately. So again, don’t disregard any signs or symptoms. Really lean into being in tune with your body. So, if you start to notice these symptoms, please seek medical treatment.
