Higher Outpatient Drug Spending At 340B Hospitals, According to New Analysis

A new analysis finds that hospitals which participate in the 340B Drug Discount Program have higher per patient outpatient pharmacy costs than their non-340B counterparts – meaning patients at 340B hospitals are prescribed more medicines and/or more expensive medicines.
“There is a growing body of research showing that the 340B program is driving up costs for patients and the health care system,” said Stephen J. Ubl, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). “The biopharmaceutical industry has long supported the 340B program, but perverse incentives have steered it away from its original intent. It’s time to get 340B back on track for patients.”
These prescribing patterns help highlight important effects, such as increased patient cost sharing, which undermines 340B’s goal of helping safety-net providers access discounts on outpatient medicines for uninsured or otherwise vulnerable patients. These outpatient medicines include medicines that are administered or dispensed at a hospital’s offsite facility, such as infusion medicines, or medicines prescribed at a hospital and picked up at a contract pharmacy. There is currently no requirement that hospitals pass 340B program savings along to patients and there is growing evidence suggesting that these discounts may actually contribute to higher out-of-pocket costs for patients.
The analysis, which was prepared by Milliman and commissioned by PhRMA, compares outpatien...

Source: Policy and Medicine - April 2, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs