Pittsburgh-based UPMC is shifting its Hillman Cancer Center to become an outpatient clinic in what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls "an accounting move" to save money through the 340B discounted drug program.
The adjustment will leave Hillman Cancer Center as an outpatient clinic affiliated with Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh. The cancer program of UPMC Passavant in Pittsburgh will also be transferred via paperwork, not physical location, to Magee-Womens stewardship, according to the report.
Magee-Womens clinics can purchase drugs at discounted rates — up to 50 percent off the wholesale price — through the 340B program. For cancer programs and their have extraordinarily expensive drugs, UPMC anticipates savings of more than $10 million per year through cancer programs' new access to 340B discounts, according to the report.
Yet a spokesperson said those savings wouldn't necessarily be perceived by patients, as the system will use the generated savings to help fund its "reinvestment into research and cancer care," according to the report.
Some experts have a problem with that plan, as Congress passed the 340B discount program was in 1992 to help clinics that serve impoverished, uninsured and at-risk populations acquire drugs at a cheaper rate.
Rena Conti, PhD, assistant professor of health policy and economics at University of Chicago, said what UPMC is doing is a nationwide trend, in which clinics and hospitals are affiliating with institutions that have 340B discount privileges.
Dr. Conti's research shows when hospitals pair with clinics in order to spread their 340B buying privileges across a wider patient base, the affiliated clinics end up serving a more affluent, better insured population than the originating hospital. Instead of providing cheaper medicine to needy patients, "The entire purpose of the affiliation to is to gain access to the deep discounts that the program provides," Dr. Conti said in the report.
Hospitals say they need the discounts, particularly given cost pressures from insurers and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And UPMC has said such shifts are routine and happen at hospital systems everywhere, according to the report. The system noted that in the past, it has shifted many procedures from more expensive hospitals to lower-reimbursement facilities, too.
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