As president and CEO of a well being care system in rural Vermont, I’ve seen a lot 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 offering entry to high quality, complete and reasonably priced well being look after rural communities and sufferers.

Sadly, nevertheless, offering this care is changing into more and more troublesome as healthcare labor prices, provide chains, and working prices proceed to rise, whereas Medicare and Medicaid funds nonetheless don’t present the mandatory protection for the prices hospitals incur to offer care.

That's why our group and numerous different hospitals throughout the nation depend on a vital program – the 340B Drug Pricing Program – to assist our mission. The 340B program permits hospitals and healthcare methods like ours to entry prescription medicines at a reduced value. It will enable our group and different 340B hospitals throughout the nation to offer expanded providers to our communities and sufferers – a lot of whom are low-income, seniors and medically weak people. This contains monetary help applications and a spread of modern community-based healthcare choices and providers.

Like most 340B hospitals, the overwhelming majority of sufferers we serve are aged or people with disabilities lined by authorities applications. In truth, greater than 70% of the care we offer is for sufferers enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid. These authorities applications chronically underpay for care, which alone locations vital monetary strain on hospitals like ours, which serve a disproportionately bigger share of those sufferers.

As our nation's ageing inhabitants continues to develop, the demand for healthcare that addresses the distinctive wants of older sufferers will solely enhance, putting even larger pressure on 340 billion hospitals like ours. Sustaining, defending, and strengthening the 340B program is vital to serving to offset the losses hospitals endure resulting from underpayments.

As well as, financial savings from the 340B program will assist assist and fund vital workforce growth applications, in addition to specialty and first care providers that enable us to recruit and retain the skilled assist wanted to satisfy the numerous advanced healthcare wants of sufferers and communities we serve.

That features a transitional care nursing program that gives sufferers with in-home assist providers after they’re discharged from the hospital. By assembly sufferers the place they’re and proactively addressing well being wants, this system has considerably diminished hospital readmission charges and common hospital lengths of keep, permitting sufferers to get better and rehabilitate safely in their very own houses whereas sustaining their high quality of life.

As well as, our group has expanded entry to important oncology providers by utilizing 340 billion in financial savings to assist our regional most cancers middle, which is accredited by the American School of Surgeons Fee on Most cancers. This regional facility helps carry most cancers care nearer to sufferers' houses, bettering entry and lowering 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 typically wrestle to entry main care. The 340B program has been vital in permitting us to broaden entry to main care by opening a number of clinics in communities with notably excessive charges of persistent illness – once more serving to to satisfy the wants of sufferers of their native communities as an alternative of forcing sufferers to journey to the emergency room.

The 340B program has additionally helped our group enhance the healthcare workforce pipeline and deal with workforce shortages in our group and throughout the nation. Leveraging the 340B financial savings, we’ve got been capable of pilot a number of modern applications – partnering with native schools, enabling nursing college students to finish medical rotations and present workers considering transitioning right into a profession in nursing by paying them whereas they full their tutorial research. targeted on creating a stronger and extra strong healthcare workforce.

Briefly, our group wouldn’t be capable of maintain itself and the applications we provide to enhance the well being and well-being of our group with out the financial savings from the 340B program. We’re extremely pleased with the work we’ve got completed for greater than 100 years to satisfy the distinctive healthcare wants of our group. To make sure that rural hospitals like ours can proceed to offer high-quality, complete well being care, the federal authorities should assist and defend the 340B Drug Pricing Program, which permits us to do what we do finest.

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