New Orleans, LA, USA & Shandong, China - China is one of the few middle-income countries with higher pharmaceutical cost out of total health care spending. The primary purpose of China’s National Essential Drug Policy (NEDP) in year 2009 was to reduce pharmaceutical burden for Chinese citizens through both more government financing and constructing a provincial drug bidding platform to control drug price. The NEDP reshaped all stakeholders involved in the Essential Drug Operation System. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the responses to the NEDP, from the system perspective of stakeholders (e.g., pharmaceutical manufacturers, delivery enterprises and health care providers).
The objective of the study is to evaluate the possible responses and impacts for each stakeholder on the China’s Essential Drug Policy, including central government, provincial governments, local governments, health care providers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, delivery enterprises, and mass media.
As described in the article, “
Mapping and Analyzing Stakeholders in China's Essential Drug System by Using Circular Model: Who We Should Deal with Next?” published in
Value in Health Regional Issues Volume 6 focusing on Asia, we found two significant results. First, provincial governments have the largest impact on China’s National Essential Drug Policy. Second, pharmaceutical manufacturer and delivery enterprises have the potential to pose threats to the policy implementation.
We recommend that authorizing provincial governments with higher autonomy and closely supervising pharmaceutical manufacturers to ensuring a promising future for the policy.
“Central government is hard to manage a day-to-day operation due to information over-flow and barriers to information sharing. Provincial governments are on the sweet spot for best implementing National Essential Drug Policy. A fair, balanced, and self-sustainable bidding platform likely motivate pharmaceutical manufacturers to actively participate in the bidding for essential drug production,” said the lead author, Hui Shao, MHA, PHD Candidate in Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA.