340B savings do not just enable hospitals to provide more care, they also help hospitals pioneer innovative approaches to bringing care directly to patients. For West Virginia University Medicine, which serves a high population of Medicare and Medicaid patients, one of these 340B-funded innovations came from recognizing a need to increase cancer screening rates. WVU Medicine 340B Enterprise Director Karen Famoso tells us how the system’s mobile cancer screening initiative came about.
The Barriers to Cancer Screening
WVU Medicine identified that some of the biggest social determinants of health for its West Virginia patients were relatively unique to the areas it serves. The rural state has significant travel barriers, small population areas, and high poverty rates, a combination that leaves thousands of patients without easy access to a source of primary care.
Mobile Screenings Look for Breast, Lung Cancers
Today, WVU Medicine operates two types of mobile cancer projects: Bonnie’s Bus and LUCAS. The former launched in 2009 and is a mobile mammography unit named after a patient who died because she had limited access to breast cancer screenings. Her family donated funding to the hospital to support this effort. More than a decade later, WVU Medicine introduced the mobile lung screening program LUCAS. That initiative provides low-dose CT scans to patients meeting the screening guideline using a nearly 70,000-pound tractor trailer.
340B Is Key To Sustaining Mobile Screening Efforts
Famoso says WVU Medicine funds its mobile cancer screening programs through grants and donations, but that is not enough to cover the full cost. That is where 340B savings can help cover the operating loss, which was almost $400,000 last year. Without those 340B savings, the health system’s financial situation would not allow investments in mission-focused programs such as Bonnie’s Bus and LUCAS.
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