Perhaps the most misreported number in the 340B debate is the number of pharmacies that have contracts with 340B healthcare providers. That number currently stands at 13,833.
Not 41,051.
The confusion comes from the way the Office of Pharmacy Affairs tracks contract pharmacies in its database. Instead of listing these brick-and-mortar stores only once, the agency counts the number of contracts between a 340B provider and a pharmacy. The confusion? The database often includes multiple contracts between a single pharmacy and different divisions of a hospital or between one pharmacy and multiple healthcare centers – so these same pharmacies are listed multiple times. The system also keeps pharmacies on the list that have terminated their contract with a 340B provider.
To unaware observers – and our critics who know better – the system leads to massive over counting of 340B contract pharmacies. Remove the pharmacies listed more than once, scrub the ones that have been terminated and you get 13,833. We will update this number as new data becomes available from OPA.
Why is this important? Because the growth in the number of 340B contract pharmacies is far lower than Big Pharma wants you to believe. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, 82 percent of 340B providers dispense outpatient medicines through an in-house pharmacy. Of the remainder, 75 percent use fewer than five contract pharmacy arrangements.