Commercial payers spend more on hospital outpatient drugs at 340B participating hospitals

The 340B program allows participating hospitals to obtain certain outpatient medications at discounted rates. Because providers keep the difference between reimbursement amount and the drug’s acquisition cost at the 340B price, there may be financial incentives for participating hospitals to overprescribe or prescribe more expensive medications. This report replicates portions of the 2015 U.S. Government Accountability Office 340B report (a comparison of the per Medicare beneficiary hospital pharmacy outpatient drug spending at 340B hospitals and non-340B hospitals) on a commercially insured population to determine if the relationships found in the Medicare population existed in the commercial markets.

This report was commissioned by PhRMA.