by admin | April 6, 2011 8:56 pm
April 6, 2011—The Office of Pharmacy Affairs (OPA) has a new mission statement.
In a notice published in the April 4 Federal Register[1] , the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) formally defines what OPA is and does. The document, called a “statement of organization, functions and delegations of authority,” was last updated in 2004. That version’s section on OPA spelled out the office’s duties in 380 words. The new version reduces that by about half.
“Our mission continues to be same,” says OPA Director Krista Pedley,”and [we] will strive to meet the needs of our safety net providers with the resources that we have available.”
Organizationally, OPA remains a component of HRSA’s Healthcare Systems Bureau, which is headed by HRSA Associate Administrator Joyce Somsak. The office’s purpose, HRSA says, is to promote clinical and cost-effective pharmacy services “to enable participating entities to stretch scarce federal resources in order to serve more patients, expand their services or offer additional services.”
That latter phrase, which is new, was adapted from language in the U.S. House report that accompanied the 1992 law that established the 340B program. Groups representing 340B hospitals and clinics frequently cite that passage when critics assert that the program was intended to apply to uninsured and low-income patients only.
Nine Responsibilities
HRSA listed OPA’s nine duties in the following order:
Notable Differences
The new mission statement has several notable differences from the old.
For example, the old version had three separate references to technical assistance (TA) but the new one has none. The 2004 statement said OPA was responsible for providing “a full range” of such aid to providers enrolled in 340B and those eligible to enroll; assistance to HRSA grantees, states, local governments and other health care delivery systems; and assistance more generally in its capacity as a federal government resource for pharmacy practice.
OPA announced major cutbacks in its TA program[2] in early March, saying they were forced by the program’s expansion without a corresponding increase in funding.
The new statement continues to say that OPA is responsible for maintaining a public database of participating covered entities, sites, and contract pharmacies, but no longer mentions listing organizations that are eligible to enroll. Likewise, the new shorter statement does not specifically address OPA’s coordination with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) or the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
Also missing are references to maintaining liaison with industry, provider, pharmacy, and other stakeholder groups, providing model contracts and business plans to providers, and managing demonstration projects.
The new version continues to cite maintaining PVP as an OPA duty and, for the first time, explicitly states that OPA will maintain the PSSC.
Finally, apart from its carryover mention of the covered entity database, the new mission statement does not specifically cite any of the new program integrity responsibilities that OPA assumed with the passage of health care reform. These include making ceiling prices transparent to covered entities, ensuring that the prices that manufacturers charge are accurate, establishing a formal dispute resolution process, imposing civil monetary penalties against noncompliant manufacturers, and establishing procedures for manufacturers to issue refunds to providers for overcharges.
Source URL: https://340bemployed.org/opa-gets-a-new-mission-statement/
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