As one of its COVID-19 resources updates, the Health Resources and Services Administration will allow 340B hospitals to bypass a registration delay so that the discounted drugs can be administered at certain offsite locations up to 22 months earlier, according to The National Law Review.
HRSA will allow hospitals to use 340B drugs at provider-run offsite locations as soon as they meet CMS' provider-based requirements, even if the location has yet to appear on a filed Medicare cost report or has yet to be registered in the online 340B database of the Office of Pharmacy Affairs as a child site of the hospital.
In the past, HRSA imposed a requirement that prevented 340B drugs to be dispensed or prescribed at these offsite locations until they appeared on a filed Medicare cost report and were registered with the 340B database. In some cases, the requirement meant that the hospital would need to wait 22 months before a new child site could be included on a hospital's filed Medicare cost report and registered.
HRSA emphasized that these locations will still need to stick to using 340B drugs on eligible patients. In addition, hospitals will still need to register offsite locations with the Office of Pharmacy Affairs when the location is on a filed Medicare cost report.
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