STAT Plus: More hospital drug spending is going toward cancer immunotherapies
Amid intense scrutiny over prescription drug costs, a new analysis finds some hospitals are spending a larger share of their budgets for new cancer and migraine treatments, as well as for a biosimilar version of a brand-name drug that is used to prevent white-cell depletion in patients given chemotherapy.
Not surprisingly, the spending reflects a growing trend among hospitals to shell out more of their dollars for outpatient infusion treatments and, in particular, costly specialty drugs, according to Bonnie Lai, vice president of product management at Lumere, a research and analytics firm that focuses on hospitals and generated the data from 26 facilities across four hospitals systems.
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