More scrutiny could be coming to 340B hospital and health care provider program. Healthcare Dive is reporting that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wants to move jurisdiction and regulation of the 340B program from Health Resources and Service Administration to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The 340B program allows certain hospitals and healthcare providers to purchase prescription drugs at a discount directly from pharmaceutical companies. An early June budget request from HHS looked to confirm that enforcement of 340B and its $12 million budget had been moved to CMS.
Federal data show that an estimated 3,000 hospitals have totaled more than $60 billion in purchases through the 340B program in 2023 with skeptics of the hospitals say they are using the program to profit off of discount drugs and hospitals claiming drugmakers fail to provide discounted prices for increasingly expensive drugs.
