The term “340B” sounds like a savings plan offered to an investor.
In reality, it’s a health care program that does have a savings element to it – for both hospitals and patients.
340B is a drug pricing program that lets health systems save millions of dollars on drug costs, increasing access to prescription medicines for community members who need them.
But Jonathon Green and Michael Azzolin, in a new GHN Commentary, point out that the indirect effects of the pandemic threaten to cut off many rural hospitals’ use of the 340B program. And those hospitals are the ones that depend on it the most.
“We were able to save nearly $1 million in our first year with the program,’’ they write. But when Covid emerged, “everything changed. A year later, our organization no longer qualifies for the 340B program.”