Rural hospitals struggle to stock expensive drugs that could save lives - Entrepreneur Generations

Rural hospitals are having trouble keeping certain life-saving drugs in stock because the government forces them to pay far more for them than large hospitals. A provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, added without debate at the end of the drafting process, denies rural hospitals from getting discounts on so-called "orphan drugs" that treat rare diseases, Sarah Jane Tribble reports for NPR. Large hospitals can get bulk discounts on drugs; rural hospitals try to make up the difference by participating in a federal drug discount program approved in 1992, but still end up paying far more for some drugs than large hospitals that receive the bulk discounts.

The real problem is that many pharmaceuticals classified as orphan drugs do not actually treat rare diseases. "The Food and Drug Administration gives the orphan drug designation to a medicine as a first step when it agrees with a drugmaker's request to study whether the medicine can be used to treat a specific rare disease. And this can happen even if a drug is already FDA-approved and on the market for use in treating a common condition," Tribble reports.

from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2f5bEb3 Rural hospitals struggle to stock expensive drugs that could save lives - Entrepreneur Generations

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