Opinion: Hospitals can save money on drugs without Washington’s help

Hospitals could make great strides in reducing the cost of delivering health care — particularly when it comes to drug costs — through a tight focus on their processes, especially the instructions that are often detailed in electronic health record systems.

At many hospitals, drug costs are an expense second only to salaries. A of 712 hospitals by the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals showed that inpatient drug spending rose 23 percent a year between 2013 and 2015, and by 39 percent on a per-admission basis. For 90 percent of the hospitals surveyed, these increases had