Associations among socioeconomic status (SES), patterns of care and outcomes in breast cancer (BC) patients (pts) in a universal health care system: Ontario’s experience.

6625 Background: The Canadian health care system was designed to provide equitable access to equivalent standards of care. We aim to examine if BC pts with different SES received different care and had different overall survival (OS) in Ontario, Canada’s largest province. Methods: Female pts diagnosed with BC between 2003-2009 were identified from the Ontario Cancer Registry and linked to databases related to physician claims, hospital and emergency visits and provincial funding programs to ascertain demographics, cancer stage (CS), comorbidities, mammography use, surgery type, adjuvant chemotherapy (chemo), radiation (RT), and vital statistics. SES was defined as neighbourhood income by postal code attained from Statistics Canada and divided into income quintiles (Q1-Q5; Q5=highest). Univariate and multivariable analyses were used to examine the association between i) SES and mammogram screening and BC treatments, and ii) SES and OS. Results: 34,446 BC pts with CS available were identified. 76.0% were > ...