A new federal law to help financially distressed rural hospitals stay open in a reduced capacity would not preserve the hospitals’ eligibility for 340B drug discounts.
Federal spending legislation that President Trump signed into law last Dec. 27 included a version of U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington’s (R-Texas) Save Rural Communities Act. As introduced in February 2020, Arrington’s bill would have let critical access hospitals (CAHs) at risk of closure scale back into outpatient-only, 24-hour rural emergency access centers (REACs). Those that became REACs would have kept their 340B eligibility under Arrington’s bill. That is not the case under the appropriations bill that became law, which uses the term rural emergency hospital (REH) instead of REAC.
A new federal law to help financially distressed rural hospitals stay open in a reduced capacity would not preserve the hospitals’ eligibility for 340B drug discounts.
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