On January 4th , China’s National Healthcare Security Administration Office promulgated the — Medical Centralized Procurement Platform Service Standards. This legislation follows the National Healthcare Security Administration’s Opinion on Improving and Enhancing the Functions of Medical Centralized Procurement Platform to Support Pharmaceutical Price Reform and Management of 2022. These new standards will go into effect on July 1. The goal of these standards is to augment and improve the services of the centralized drug procurement system. The standards cover a number of topics related to specific transactions including – 1. Information authentication, 2. Online applications, 3. Information changes, 4. Consultations, 5. Required documentation, 6. Processing times, etc. These standards do not cover things like volume-based procurement or national insurance issues.
For pharmaceutical companies, these standards help them better understand how China’s central procurement system works. For the people running the China procurement platform it gives them directions on how to fulfill their jobs. Chinese provincial personnel are guided by these standards too and are supposed to generate equitable and just services locally. Once implemented, the Chinese government is looking to get feedback on how to improve this drug procurement system.