The National Standards for Essential Drugs Purchasing Breakthroughs Concerns on the Implementation of the Differences in the Provinces

Business Club December 15th The industry’s experts and entrepreneurs generally agree with innovations such as “double envelopes”, volume pricing, and classified procurement.

Despite the late arrival, the unified national tender for essential drugs has been recognized by the industry for its innovation. Together with the clear compensation mechanism for basic medical institutions at the State Council Executive Meeting, the introduction of a unified document for tendering basic medicines can be regarded as a “combination boxing” that promotes the smooth implementation of the basic medicine system.

The General Office of the State Council officially issued the "Guidelines for Establishing and Regulating the Basic Drug Purchase Mechanism of the Government for Basic Medical and Health Institutions" (hereinafter referred to as the "Procurement Mechanism") on December 9. The Purchasing Mechanism has 15 measures in establishing and standardizing the basic drug procurement mechanism, mainly emphasizing the implementation of centralized purchasing and unified distribution in provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) as well as the combination of government-led and market mechanisms; Combining procurement advantages, bidding and purchasing, linking quantity and price, signing contracts, completing the entire procurement process in one go, minimizing procurement costs, realizing safe and effective basic medicines, good quality, reasonable prices, timely supply, and promoting the production and supply of essential drugs .

In an interview, a reporter from the “Medicine Economics News” found that industry experts and entrepreneurs generally agree with the innovations such as “double envelopes”, “quantitative pricing”, and classified procurement that are required in the “Procurement Mechanism”. It is worth noting that since the implementation is based on provincial procurement of basic medicines for tendering, the document finally requires provinces to implement the document by the end of December 2010 and submit it to the State Council's Medical Reform Office. It is expected that the provinces will eventually implement the document by the end of this month. Program.

"Much borrowed from the Anhui model"

Judging from the overall contents, the "Procurement Mechanism" will serve as a national unified document to guide the procurement of basic medicines. In terms of “double envelopes”, linking quantity and price, classifying purchases, strengthening market price surveys, and establishing price dynamic adjustment mechanisms, they all exhibit greater innovation.

However, the reporter learned that most of the pharmaceutical companies are still most concerned about the "purchase mechanism" requirements and requirements for the purchase price of essential drugs.

"The formulation of this document borrowed much from the experience of the Anhui model, but it was formulated after the country saw the opposition in the industry and understood the drawbacks of the Anhui model." Gan Rongfu, senior researcher of the operation management department of Sinopharm Holding, told reporter.

The "Procurement Mechanism" proposes to encourage local governments to adopt a "double envelope" tendering system, in which the economic and technical tenders and the business tenders are prepared separately when the tenders are prepared. The enterprises also vote in two tenders at the same time.

Among them, the economic and technical tender mainly assesses the production scale, distribution capacity, sales, industry rankings, market reputation, and GMP (GSP) qualification certification, the history of drug quality sampling and sampling, and electronic monitoring capabilities to ensure the quality of essential drugs. . At the same time, only enterprises that have passed the economic and technical tender evaluation can enter the business bid review, and the bid for the commercial tender is the lowest bidder.

"The 'double envelope' is first and foremost worthy of recognition in terms of design. Under the premise of ensuring the quality of medicines and the comprehensive strength of the company's production and reputation, we will select the best-priced medicines. This, together with the basic medicine system, requires the realization of basic medicines that are safe, effective, and of good quality. The direction of good, reasonable prices, and timely supply is consistent.” Gan Rongfu told reporters that price and price linkages, price surveys for strengthening the basic drug market, and methods for classifying purchases are targeted to reasonably determine prices, and they are signed after the end of bidding. Purchase and sales contracts and strict basic drug purchase payment systems are all important measures to ensure that the prices of pharmaceuticals are reasonable.

In addition, another innovation of the "Purchasing Mechanism" is the demand for price-price linkage.

“In the past, basic drug procurement, one of the technical points for drug bidding was the balance between the amount of drug used in the province and the lowest winning bid price that they could afford.” A director of the industrial and commercial coordinating company told reporters after the local procurement plan was established. , Enterprise bids can be based on plans to clearly develop the most suitable bid prices, which will allow enterprises to obtain full competition in hard power.

“But also make it clear that when the amount of purchases that have been added into the province for the entire year does not reach the amount of procurement plans or if the gap between the two is too large, how should the coordination between procurement agencies and enterprises be coordinated,” the director emphasized.

Concerns about implementation differences in provinces

Although entrepreneurs and experts in the industry are relatively positive about the advanced and innovative nature of this national document, they still need various provinces to formulate the final implementation plan. Therefore, the industry believes that there are still various uncertainties in the bidding of basic medicines.

Such as the industry's most concerned about the "double envelope" system. The original intention of the national design is to first eliminate some companies that fail to meet the requirements through a series of technical indicators that reflect the comprehensive strength of the enterprise, and to raise the quality level of the bidding companies and related products to a certain level in order to ensure the quality of the bid-winning requirements. Under this premise, the price is based on the price of the business and the lowest price is awarded.

This idea has been well received by most companies, but some companies have raised concerns: In the evaluation system led by the provinces, can we fully use the role of the technical standard? Because once the technology is calibrated too low, all companies can pass it.

Gan Rongfu expressed concern about the implementation of the future. He believes that the "Purchasing Mechanism" will decentralize tender procurement rights to localities. Under the "double envelope" requirement, it is likely to bring about a wider range of local protection. As a result, the advantages of local enterprises will become even more pronounced. The risks faced by large pharmaceutical companies will increase.

Some companies have also proposed solutions to these concerns. Wang Changyu, deputy general manager of Nanchang Lijian Pharmaceuticals, believes that the technical standards in the “double envelopes” should be as detailed as possible, and each indicator should be given a proper score in order to be able to effectively reflect the quality level of the company's pharmaceutical production and the company’s Comprehensive strength.

“Besides that, we should also give some 'base price' to the basic medicine bid to reduce the risk of basic medicine supply.” Wang Changyu told reporters that in some provinces earlier, some companies deliberately used Bid below the cost price, but in the end due to the local network, the company's production capacity, loss is unbearable and other reasons, there have been more than 150 companies in the province are not available or can not supply quantity on time.

Wang Changyu believes that if, after passing the technical standard and the business standard, the bid product is still unable to determine the superiority of the enterprise and the product above the “base price”, the important indicators in the technical standard can be compared and those with high scores will win the bid.

In addition, the reporter also learned that the current NDRC is reviewing the issue of similar tendering “base price” for the phenomenon of low price for basic drug tenders that has generally emerged in the past year, and the specific time for publication has not yet been determined.