Under the 340B Drug Pricing Program (340B Program), administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), drug manufacturers provide discounted prices on outpatient drugs to certain hospitals and other entities. About two-thirds of hospitals participating in the 340B Program (approximately 1,700) are nongovernmental hospitals

The 340B Drug Pricing Program enables certain categories of hospitals to obtain discounts on covered outpatient drugs. To be eligible for the program, hospitals must meet various requirements. For most hospitals, these include serving a specified disproportionate share of low-income inpatients, such as Medicaid inpatients, as measured by the hospital's Medicare disproportionate share hospital (DS

VAMC nursing officials--nurse executives who are responsible for all nursing care at VAMCs and nurse managers who are responsible for supervising RNs on VAMC inpatient units--GAO interviewed reported that although VA inpatient RNs are required to input patient data into VA's PCS, they do not rely on the information generated by PCS because it is outdated and inaccurate. These nursing officials no

Government hospitals generally devoted substantially larger shares of their patient operating expenses to uncompensated care than did nonprofit and for-profit hospitals. The nonprofit groups' share was higher than that of the for-profit groups in four of the five states, but the difference was small relative to the difference found when making comparisons with the government hospital group. Furth

Almost all (99 percent) of the 16,379 enrolled veterans in the 18-county Chattanooga area, as of September 2001, faced travel times that exceeded VA's guidelines for accessing inpatient hospital care. During fiscal year 2002, only a few Chattanooga-area veterans were admitted to non-VA hospitals in Chattanooga--constituting about 5 percent of inpatient workload. In addition, over half (8,400) of

The seven GPOs we studied varied in how they carried out their contracting processes. The GPOs were able to expedite their processes for selecting products to place on contract, particularly when they considered these products to be innovative. The GPOs also reported receiving from manufacturers administrative fees in 2002 that were generally consistent with the 3-percent-of-purchase-price thresh

Concerns have been growing about the supply of health care workers and the future needs of an aging population. Shortages of nurses and nurse aides, the two largest categories of health care workers, are of particular concern. Although the number of pharmacists has grown during the past decade, the increasing demand for pharmacy services is outpacing the growth in supply, according to the Depart

GAO noted that: (1) while some health care institutions have chosen to reprocess and reuse some kinds of SUDs, accurate and comprehensive information about the number of facilities that use reprocessed SUDs and the types of SUDs that are reprocessed is not available; (2) surveys by professional associations and other groups have found that approximately 20 to 30 percent of American hospitals repo

GAO noted that: (1) VHA's hospital utilization systemwide has dropped dramatically during the past decade, with most of this decline occurring over the past 3 years; (2) furthermore, hospital utilization is expected to continue to decline significantly over the next 20 years, primarily because of a projected 36-percent reduction in the veteran population; (3) utilization of individual VHA hospita