Annual health MOTs, provided as part of added value services to insurance products, really come into their own in preventing customers from developing cancers with low survival rates, according to Alan Lakey, director of CIExpert.
Lakey cited the example of his own father who thought he only had a ‘smokers cough’ but instead was suffering with throat cancer.
The urgency an importance of early screening and detection was echoed by Perci Health CEO Kelly McCabe who highlighted this as the single biggest opportunity to save lives.
Lakey was speaking to Health & Protection following a London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine study showing that while the number of people surviving cancer has improved hugely in the past 50 years, progress remains uneven with some cancers with the worst survival rates falling further behind.
The 10-year survival rate for melanoma skin cancer for example, is now above 90% in England and Wales, and for all cancers half of patients can expect to live that long – double the figure in the early 1970s.
However there has been little improvement in other cancers such as those affecting the oesophagus, stomach and lungs which have less than a 20% survival rate while fewer than 5% survive pancreatic cancer for ten years.
Often too late
Lakey explained the main problem with all of these cancers is by the time there is a diagnosis, it is often too late.
“If you look at pancreatic cancer, every insurer includes stage one or as they would determine it less advanced pancreatic cancer as an additional payment condition and there’s not been a single diagnosis in the past four years,” Lakey continued.
“While it’s nice to have, when you hear of people being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a bit like Patrick Swayze, it’s because by the time symptoms appear it’s stage three or four which is why they generally die.”
And with stomach and oesophagus cancers, Lakey maintained there is a tendency to overlook symptoms, citing the example of his own father.
“As an example, way back in 1976, my father developed a cough. He was a smoker so he thought it was a smoker’s cough as they used to call it then,” Lakey revealed.
“After about a couple of weeks he went to the GP and the GP said, ‘I’ll give you an antibiotic – you’ve got an infection’.
“That didn’t work and he went back weeks later and was given a stronger antibiotic and then was given an even stronger one.
“My father said, ‘You clearly don’t know what’s wrong with me – can you send me to hospital’ and that’s when he found out he had throat cancer which swiftly went to his lungs, to his liver, to his bones to everywhere else.”
Health MOTs a life saver
Consequently, Lakey maintained that the timeliness of diagnosis is the key factor.
“The timeliness of the diagnosis that determines the likely recovery or survival and the symptoms can be ignored because these symptoms are often the symptoms we get every day from things like indigestion or the flu,” Lakey continued.
“And you tend to assume it’s something you’ll get over.”
But Lakey added that there is a tool in insurer and adviser arsenals that is making a difference.
“When people say to me, what is the most valuable of all of these services?” Lakey continued.
“The ones that I like are the ones that are offered by both Aviva and by HSBC which is an annual health MOT.
“That won’t necessarily find everything because it’s blood based, but nonetheless it’s quite likely they’ll find some things at an early stage.”
Lakey pointed out that these services can save insurers’ money and for customers can save their lives.
“It’s a great thing and I wish every insurer would include an MOT,” he added.
“Even better would be a free MRI, but that would be too expensive, though that would be great.”
Moving beyond traditional screening
Kelly McCabe, CEO and co-founder of Perci Health, echoed Lakey’s sentiments, adding the single biggest opportunity to save lives is to diagnose these cancers earlier, when treatment options are more effective and survival chances are far higher.
“As well as to provide cancer prevention education and personalised support for these types of cancers as smoking, alcohol and diet are risk factors for these cancer types,” McCabe continued.
But McCabe added early detection must go beyond traditional screening programmes.
“This is because for many of these cancers, and for the 55% of deaths that still arise from rarer cancers, no population-wide screening exists,” she continued.
“That means raising awareness of symptoms, improving access to rapid diagnostic pathways, introducing expert care navigation to help people get to the right tests and specialists quickly, and investing in research to develop new early detection tools and more effective prevention programmes targeting younger populations at the earliest window of opportunity.
“Without a much stronger focus on these measures, we will not see the same step-change in outcomes for these cancers as we have for others.”
