As President & CEO of a rural Vermont well being system, I’ve witnessed lots of our choices evolve, from expanded entry to medical know-how to our specialty care. However one factor has remained the identical – our dedication to offer entry to high-quality, complete, and reasonably priced well being take care of rural communities and sufferers.
Sadly, nonetheless, this care is turning into an increasing number of difficult to offer as well being care labor, provide chains, and working prices proceed to rise whereas Medicare and Medicaid funds proceed to lack the required protection for the prices hospitals incur to offer care.
That’s why our group and numerous different hospitals across the nation depend on a important program – the 340B Drug Pricing Program – to help our mission. The 340B program allows hospitals and well being methods like ours to entry prescription prescribed drugs at a lowered value. This, in flip, permits our group and different 340B hospitals nationwide to supply extra complete companies to our communities and sufferers—lots of whom are low-income, seniors, and medically weak people. This contains monetary help packages in addition to a spread of revolutionary, community-based well being care choices and companies.
Like most 340B hospitals, the overwhelming majority of the sufferers we serve are older or people with disabilities coated by authorities packages. In reality, greater than 70% of the care we offer is for sufferers enrolled in both Medicare or Medicaid. These authorities packages chronically underpay for care, which alone places important monetary stress on hospitals like ours that serve a disproportionately bigger share of those sufferers.
As our nation’s getting old inhabitants continues to develop, the demand for well being care concentrating on the distinctive wants of senior sufferers will solely improve—placing a fair higher pressure on 340B hospitals like ours. Sustaining, defending, and strengthening the 340B program is critically essential to assist offset the losses hospitals face resulting from underpayments.
Furthermore, financial savings from the 340B program assist help and fund important workforce improvement packages in addition to specialty and first care companies that enable us to recruit and retain the skilled help wanted to satisfy the numerous advanced care wants of the sufferers and communities we serve.
That features a transitional care nursing program that gives sufferers with at-home help companies after being discharged from the hospital. By assembly sufferers the place they’re and proactively addressing well being wants, this system has considerably lowered hospital readmission charges and the common hospital length-of-stay, permitting sufferers to recuperate and rehabilitate safely in their very own properties whereas sustaining their high quality of life.
Moreover, our group has expanded entry to important oncology companies through the use of 340B financial savings to assist maintain our regional most cancers middle, which is accredited by the American Faculty of Surgeons Fee on Most cancers. This regional facility helps carry most cancers care nearer to sufferers’ properties, bettering entry and decreasing prices whereas eliminating the necessity for our rural sufferers to journey lengthy distances to entry oncology care.
As with many rural communities, the sufferers we serve usually battle to entry major care. The 340B program has been important in permitting us to increase major care entry by opening a number of clinics in communities with notably excessive charges of continual illnesses—once more, serving to meet sufferers’ wants of their native communities reasonably than forcing sufferers to journey to the emergency room.
The 340B program has additionally helped our group enhance our well being care staffing pipeline and tackle the workforce shortages in our neighborhood and all through the nation. Leveraging 340B financial savings, we’ve been capable of pilot a number of revolutionary packages—partnering with native schools, permitting nursing college students to finish scientific rotation, and supporting present employees occupied with transitioning to a profession in nursing by paying them whereas they full their tutorial research—all aimed toward creating a stronger, extra sturdy well being care workforce.
In brief, our group couldn’t maintain itself or the packages we offer to enhance the well being and well-being of our neighborhood with out financial savings from the 340B program. We’re extremely happy with the work we’ve finished to satisfy the distinctive well being care wants of our neighborhood for over 100 years. To make sure that rural hospitals like ours can proceed delivering high-quality, complete well being care, the federal authorities should help and shield the 340B Drug Pricing Program that allows us to do what we do greatest.
Photograph: ipopba, Getty Pictures
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340B Program Preserves, Improves Access to Rural Health Care
