The federal government should not impose a new, major data reporting requirement on 340B-eligible hospitals to support the implementation of a new policy that federal courts twice have rejected, NASH told the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last week.

In formal comments in response to a CMS proposal to require hospitals that participate in the section 340B prescription drug discount program to provide CMS with extensive data on their acquisition costs for 340B drugs, NASH wrote that such data collection would be burdensome; that CMS should not be reducing 340B payments to providers because such a policy decision falls solely within the purview of Congress, which created the program; and that instead of focusing on just this one aspect of the court’s rejection of its attempts to reduce 340B payments, CMS should instead focus on the court’s order that the agency develop a means of reimbursing hospitals for the lost 340B payments Medicare has withheld from providers for the past two years.

Most private safety-net hospitals participate in the 340B program and count on the resources the program generates to help them provide additional services to the low-income residents of the communities in which they are located.

Learn more about why NASH objects to CMS’s planned data reporting requirement in NASH’s formal comment letter to CMS.