|
|
OPAT
Newsletter Sponsored by the OPAT Outcomes Registry |
Volume 4, Number
2 |
Editors: Alan D. Tice,
MD, John Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, HI Susan Rehm, MD,
Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH |
September/October
2004 |
|
REPORT FROM THE FIELD – Watch
Your Costs! |
~R. Brooks
Gainer, MD~
-
I recently was notified by a home
health care agency that they had a difficult time getting Penicillin
G.
They could find only one supplier, Geneva of Austria, and the
cost was $131.93 for a 20 million unit (mu) vial. I checked the
acquisition cost to our practice and found it to be $145.00 from
the same supplier. In
June of 2002, the price was $8.07 for a 20 mu vial of Penicillin G. I
next turned to the HCPCS Manual and found that Medicare pays $1.57 for
20 mu of Penicillin G and their listed commercial payment is $40. This
prompted me to review the cost of several old and new anti-infectives
used in OPAT. I
also reviewed the reimbursement from Medicare and the Medicare listed
commercial reimbursements.
Oxacillin is another anti-infective
that is hard to get at times.
Review of it also revealed it to be a costly drug for OPAT. In
August of 2002, one gram cost $1.56 and today it costs $6.23.
Medicare reimburses $1.42 per gram and the commercial
reimbursement listed is $14.16 per gram.
Another striking revolution came from
a local pharmacist who ordered 2 oz of
lindane for a patient with
scabies and found the cost had gone from under $5 to now over $96 for
this old medication.
I
urge you to review the cost and reimbursement figures for the
anti-infectives you prescribe and administer in your practice and
utilize in OPAT.
|
OPAT
Outcomes Registry, 6240 Tacoma Mall Blvd, #104, Tacoma, WA, 98409 *
Phone: 800-577-2820, Fax: 253-274-0877 * email: info@opat.com |
|
|