The pharmaceutical industry network introduced many new policies that were of interest last year. But of course, many central government measures are intended to benefit ordinary families and stimulate the development of the health care industry. However, they are implemented at the grassroots level and reimbursement mechanism. At the time of the actual situation, the actual results were inconsistent with the original intention of the policy.
In general, apart from the Chinese government issuing a high-price fine for GSK, the Chinese government has created a lot of space for the private sector. This means that China's market for medical device equipment, pharmaceuticals, and new medical services remains strong. Companies that benefited from the Chinese market last year are likely to continue to benefit this year.
Having said that, what are the most important things in the Chinese healthcare economy that will surface in 2015? The following are seven issues that we are currently following. This year, companies and investors should pay close attention to the entire process.
1. Many of the biggest healthcare reforms will be completed this year, such as allowing foreign capital to enter hospitals and elderly care areas; but the immediate medical economy requires more gradual and fundamental policy adjustments.
One example is the need to expedite the implementation of reforms that allow doctors to practise medicine at multiple points of practice. Another example revolves around family health care. In the past three years we have done extensive analysis and reporting on this area.
China has made very active progress in allowing wholly foreign-owned enterprises to enter the medical and elderly care industry; however, certain types of primary health care services, clinics and home health care services are still under the jurisdiction of the Chinese health authority, and the existing regulatory mechanisms cannot The providers of these different types of services are properly divided.
As a result, operators who want to provide more targeted healthcare services are difficult to achieve cost-effectiveness under the regulatory framework of the hospital. In many cases, these operators find that the regulatory system that they need to comply with is originally targeted at large-scale hospital projects. To design. These approval processes lack flexibility and cannot be simplified with a more streamlined model of healthcare delivery.
In fact, foreign-capital companies either end up operating outside of their official licenses or adapt their approvals, but there are too many loopholes and impracticalities. Most of these reforms are urgently needed by health care providers. China needs to introduce foreign direct investment in this regard, but the supervision in this area lacks flexibility and cannot be adjusted according to specific services.
2. China's State Food and Drug Administration increased funding.
In December last year, the 25th session of the China-U.S. Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade was held in Chicago. At the meeting, China actively committed itself to resolving the issue of China's "drug time difference" complained by pharmaceutical companies. This means that although other countries have reached a consensus on a set of international standards, the standards adopted by China's State Food and Drug Administration are not consistent with it, so new therapies are not released in the Chinese market. This undermines the interests of Chinese patients and significantly delays the valuable time for new patented drugs to enter the Chinese market.
In addition to the problem of jet lag, the Chicago conference also revealed some favorable news - China promised to speed up the approval of certain medical device equipment. This is all some hopeful progress—solving the long-standing problems that have always plagued western multinational corporations.
However, what we need to wait and see is whether the State Food and Drug Administration can obtain additional budgetary funds to establish infrastructure, training programs, and tracking systems to ensure that the department has new capabilities to cooperate with the above commitments. Without these major investments, the problem of drug delays and delays in the approval of medical device equipment may remain controversial.
3. Hospital funding, especially paying attention to doctor's income.
In the past two years, none of the issues that would make people interested in China's healthcare economy have been more important than the fact that Chinese public hospitals continue to make ends meet and doctors' income has always been low. The root cause of every corruption scandal we hear in Chinese hospitals lies in the fact that China’s public hospitals have a severe shortage of funds and doctors’ income is low.
Want to fundamentally solve the problem of corruption in Chinese hospitals? Those crackdowns from summer 2013 to the end of 2014 will only have short-term effects. Long-term reforms need to make it unnecessary for doctors to compensate for the lack of grey income through drug companies, patient families, and hospital internal management.
One of the biggest problems in China’s public health system is that recent crackdowns have only had short-term effects and have not addressed the structural nature of medical expense reimbursement and medical staff remuneration. If this is the case, in a few years the government will have to take another company and the loss will be to the Chinese family.
4. Pilot prescription drug online sales.
If you have a general understanding of the situation in China, you will realize that there is such a view that although China's health care system is currently lagging behind, under the pressure of market demand and lack of infrastructure, there will be some innovations and innovations. Disruptive ideas. Other fields such as telecommunications have already staged similar dramas. China does leapfrog over the West in these areas because it does not need to deal with some legacy issues.
Can China also make similar progress in the medical field? If the answer is yes, then one area of ​​concern is online prescription drug sales. There are still many issues surrounding this, including regulatory issues and how B2C distribution channels will be monitored.
We have already seen that Alibaba has publicly stated that it intends to use this as a strategic priority for the company next year, and that many of China's largest pharmaceutical retailers are preparing for infrastructure to meet POS, regulatory and distribution requirements.
Please pay close attention to this area, because it may also solve one of the major challenges of China's public health care: how to obtain and where to get primary care services (or, as the case may be, why not get them).
5. Telemedicine will become a huge platform.
We already know that Alibaba and China Ping An will invest in telemedicine. This is because, in order to make online sales of prescription drugs legal in China, doctors are still required to provide guidance.
You may think this is just going through the court. Maybe in the short term. But in the long run, this may be an important part of re-directing how and where Chinese families seek primary medical advice. Right now, most people go to public hospitals for such consultations. In the future, it is entirely possible for telemedicine to help Chinese families obtain basic primary medical services.
Integration of telemedicine, prescription drug online sales, online follow-up appointments or expert appointments, and electronic medical records may become a transformative force in the Chinese healthcare system.
6. Expand the scope of medical insurance applications so that foreign profitable hospitals can benefit from it?
China's progress in improving the coverage of health care coverage (now 98%) is commendable. However, those who like to spurt will immediately point out that the actual reimbursement level of medical insurance is very low; and those who take a more positive view think that the national medical insurance is the basis that the government can use to build a high-level system.
The need to expand coverage for reimbursement in 2015 (which will inevitably bring about some additional pressure, such as pressure on medicines on the National Essential Drug List), the inclusion of new treatments in the scope of reimbursement, and allowing Medicare patients to have the right to choose where to go for medical treatment More flexibility.
7. Will the Chinese government pass the "Anti-Monopoly Law" or anti-corruption investigations to get more domestic and foreign companies in the pharmaceutical or medical device field?
Regarding how the GSK crisis will affect multinational corporations, various pessimistic despair moods have been overrated, but despite this, calm has now been restored. Will there be new antitrust or anti-corruption cases in 2015?