The New Era of 340B

It's been a bit since my last update. I know that my blog contains no pictures so I seem boring but I completely planned to upload pics soon. Then I had a serious disagreement with my iPhone and it decided to reset itself and delete everything that was in the phone over the past 5 months. Meaning that I lost all the pics I took this summer, I'll try to get some pics from the other interns and take more pics before the end of the internship, which is only a month away.
Enough complaining this Monday I was invited to the annual 340B Coalition Summit held in Washington, D.C. The conference attracts pharmacist, physicians, nurses and business managers from all over the country to discuss the future of 340B. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Health Care Reform is the first change to the 340B change since it's creation in 1992. To give a brief rundown on what exactly 340B is and how it relates to hospitals I will attempt to make it as painless as possible.
Almost every hospital participates in a form of charity. As health care professionals it is not in the nature of our job to turn away patients in need. When a hospital services a disproportionate number of patients who neither qualify for Medicare or Medicaid assistance that hospital outpatient pharmacy can now apply for the 340B program. The official percentage is 11.75% of your population must fit in this description of need. So now what? Say normally I purchase a bottle of Drug A for $1.00 and I normally sell that bottle of Drug A for $1.75, well my profit margin for that drug is $0.75. Now I am part of the 340B program and under this program I can purchase drugs for a deeply discounted price. For the same bottle of Drug A I can now buy it at a price of $0.75, well I am still going to sell it for normal price of $1.75. What changed? Well now my margin on the same product is now $1.00 compared to $0.75. The goal of this increased margin however is not to pocket the savings but put the savings back into the charity fund. This allows the hospital to either increase the number of patients they serve or close the gap in the dollar value of drugs given to patients without insurance. Also a few things to note 340B is that it is only used for outpatient drugs, not inpatient and only a few clinic drugs. 340B is important because like I said most hospitals have a form a charity it is beneficial to be part of the 340B program to increase your margins and close the gap in charitable funds and revenue collected.
Back to business the summit was actually over three days but I was only able to go to the first day. The two big questions that were going to be debated over the conference were: 1) if everyone is now covered in some form or another with insurance will their be a need for 340B? and 2) if manufactures can afford to offer 15-30% discounts on the drugs currently under the program than what kind of prices are they charging? Two great questions without solid answers. As health care providers it is in our best interest to serve our population any way possible without going broke and that's what 340B allows. What about the millions of Americans that health care reform leaves out, who still wont have insurance? All valid questions and this is just a small portion of the ACA. I bring attention to this because pharmacist play a crucial role in the years moving forward at least when it comes to 340B pharmacist have taken the leadership role and advocated for their patients which is great. When law is finally signed there could be substantial changes to 340B like getting is extended into the inpatient setting, it could disappear all together. I guess only time will tell...
P.S. - Love walking through the conference with my Johns Hopkins badge on, they treat you like a freakin rock star. No joke