By Gina Shaw
A new report has found that the average total drug spending per hospital admission increased 18.5% between fiscal years 2015 and 2017, driven in large part by outpatient drug spending, which increased by 28.7% per adjusted admission. In addition, inpatient drug spending per adjusted admission increased 9.6% during the same period.
These increases were further exacerbated by the cost of drug shortages. Almost 80% of the surveyed hospitals indicated that drug shortages resulted in