National Drug Centralized Procurement Advances as NHSA Encourages Expansion of Sanming Alliance

Driven by strong national policy support, the centralized drug procurement initiative has progressed smoothly, with all 11 pilot cities having fully implemented the “4+7” volume-based procurement program.

As the earliest pioneer in exploring centralized drug procurement, Sanming City in Fujian Province formally established the “Sanming Alliance for Joint Price-Capped Procurement of Drugs and Medical Consumables” (hereinafter referred to as the “Sanming Alliance”) in 2016 under the guidance of the State Council’s Office of Healthcare Reform and the National Health and Family Planning Commission. The alliance aims to achieve cross-regional joint procurement and substantially alleviate the medical expense burden on residents in member cities.

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned from official sources at the Sanming Municipal Healthcare Security Administration that Lin Xinglu, Secretary of the Sanming Municipal Party Committee, recently led a delegation to visit the National Healthcare Security Administration. During the visit, Secretary Lin briefed Hu Jinglin, Director of the National Healthcare Security Administration, on Sanming’s progress in healthcare security information system development and the implementation of cross-regional centralized procurement through the Sanming Alliance.

Director Hu Jinglin gave full affirmation to the Sanming healthcare reform. He pointed out that it is necessary to thoroughly summarize the experience of Sanming’s reforms and promote them nationwide; continue to support the construction of Sanming’s medical insurance information systems, and encourage the Sanming Alliance to grow stronger and larger.

Since the implementation of the national “4+7” volume-based procurement program, Fujian Province and Hebei Province have fully adopted the winning bid results of the national “4+7” initiative. On August 1, the National Healthcare Security Administration issued the Notice on Arrangements for Expanding the Geographic Scope of the Pilot Program for National Centralized Drug Procurement and Use. Multiple provinces have begun submitting actual procurement data for drugs included in the pilot program for national centralized drug procurement and use. The subsequent development of centralized drug procurement remains a current focus of attention.

The experience of the Sanming Alliance is worth drawing upon. It is understood that the Sanming Alliance has established a cross-regional joint procurement platform covering procurement services for pharmaceuticals, medical consumables (including reagents), and traditional Chinese medicine decoction pieces. This platform achieves full-process integration of joint procurement, trading, settlement, and supervision. By adhering to the principles of “unified platform, unified catalog, unified pricing, and unified standards,” it helps alliance members achieve intelligent volume-based price negotiation, one-stop transaction settlement, and multi-dimensional, refined full-process supervision, thereby rapidly meeting diverse needs across different regions.

As the alliance’s sole official service platform, it was jointly developed by the Haixi Pharmaceutical Trading Center, invested in by WeDoctor, and the Sanming Alliance. Alliance members now cover 32 counties across 21 cities in 15 provinces throughout China. Member cities will go live on the Sanming Alliance Platform in batches, aligned with the progress of their institutional reforms, to realize the alliance’s synergistic effects. To date, the Sanming Alliance Platform has achieved interconnectivity with the Fujian Provincial Procurement Platform, delivering average annual savings of 20%–40% on pharmaceutical and medical consumable procurement costs for participating cities.

Previously, the Hebei Provincial Healthcare Reform Office signed an agreement with Sanming City, under which six pilot cities, including Handan, and 28 demonstration counties jointly joined the Sanming Alliance. In July this year, Handan officially launched the Sanming Alliance platform, taking the lead in achieving intelligent volume aggregation, smart price negotiation, automated tendering and procurement, online trading, electronic settlement, and end-to-end supervision for joint drug procurement. This has realized fully digitalized, intelligent, and systematic operations across all stages.

Building on the cooperation framework of the Sanming Alliance, the Hebei Provincial Healthcare Security Administration signed an agreement with the Haixi Pharmaceutical Trading Center in May this year. Under this agreement, the latter is responsible for constructing and operating a provincial-level centralized procurement platform featuring an innovative model for Hebei Province. Currently, the selection results of the national “4+7” drug centralized procurement have been fully implemented across Hebei Province.