What is a Cancer Care Gap in Healthcare?
Care gaps in healthcare are missed, delayed, or incomplete steps in care that prevent patients from receiving timely clinical support.
A cancer care gap can occur at any stage, from screening and diagnosis through treatment and survivorship. Examples include missed screenings, delayed follow-up, incomplete diagnostic workups, treatment delays, unmanaged symptoms, and absent survivorship care.
Why It Matters
Color identifies who is due for screening, reaches members through tailored outreach, provides at-home tests and imaging access, and manages abnormal findings until diagnostic next steps are complete.
For employers, these gaps show up as higher claims, longer absences, greater disability risk, employee stress, caregiver burden, and lost productivity. For health plans, they can drive avoidable emergency department visits, duplication, delayed treatment, and unmanaged survivorship needs.
How care gaps in healthcare work
Cancer care gaps commonly occur in six areas:
Prevention: A member is eligible for screening but does not complete it.
Screening: Color's screening programs are clinically managed from risk assessment through abnormal-result resolution, not measured only by kit shipment or appointment scheduling.
Abnormal result follow-up: A screening result needs additional testing, but next steps do not happen.
Diagnosis: Imaging, biopsy, pathology, or specialist review is delayed or incomplete.
Active treatment: Symptoms, side effects, nutrition, mental health, and urgent concerns are not proactively managed.
Survivorship: A survivor lacks a follow-up plan for recurrence monitoring, late effects, and long-term care.
Care Gaps in Healthcare in the Context of Employee Benefits
Benefits teams often discover cancer care gaps through claims reviews, high-cost cases, employee escalations, leave requests, or delayed diagnoses. The challenge is that claims data can lag, and by the time a gap appears in reporting, the member may already be deep into treatment.
A strong cancer benefit should identify and close gaps proactively through screening outreach, clinical follow-up, treatment review, symptom management, and survivorship planning.
Key Takeaways
Care gaps in healthcare are missed or delayed steps that prevent timely, appropriate care.
In cancer, care gaps can affect screening, diagnosis, treatment, symptom management, and survivorship.
Color addresses cancer care gaps through access, speed, and direct clinical care across the full journey.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is an example of a cancer care gap?
A: A common example is an abnormal colorectal cancer screening result that does not lead to timely colonoscopy or diagnostic follow-up.
Q: Why are care gaps in healthcare costly?
A: Care gaps can delay diagnosis or treatment, increase disease progression risk, lead to avoidable emergency care, and create duplicative or unnecessary services.
Q: How can employers close cancer care gaps?
A: Employers can close gaps by offering a clinically managed cancer benefit that identifies risk, tracks screening completion, manages abnormal results, provides treatment, and oversees survivorship.