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Following the recent district court decision to remand to the Department of Health and Human Services the question of how to repay 340B hospitals for funds unlawfully withheld for five years, AHA today asked to meet with the responsible HHS team to discuss its forthcoming remedial proposal. The letter also offered five guiding principles in the hope of expediting this administrative process and avoiding further legal challenges. 

Specifically, the letter calls for HHS to: 

•    Repay each 340B hospital the full amount that was unlawfully withheld between January 2018 and September 2022;
•    Repay each 340B hospital promptly;
•    Not impose a prospective remedy; 
•    Pay hospitals interest on its underpayments until they are fully repaid; and 
•    Not recoup funds from the hospital field to achieve budget neutrality. 

“As the AHA has stated before, we are willing to work with HHS to assure a fair and equitable resolution of these issues, which have already taken far too long to resolve, at great cost to the entire hospital field,” the AHA letter states. “Working together, HHS and the AHA can develop a fair and administrable remedy that avoids further legal or administrative delay.”

View the AHA letter for more details on each of these principles.