Drug price hikes slam hospitals, AHA and others say

Healthcare IT News: Hospitals are getting slammed by drug price hikes that often have nothing to do with improving patient health, a new report has found.

Inpatient drug spending increased by 23.4 percent annually from 2013 to 2015, compared with 9.9 percent annual increases on retail drug spending during the same period, according to a new report by National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, which was commissioned by the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals. Spending was driven by increases in drug unit prices rather than an increase in the volume of drugs used, they found.

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