OBJECTIVES: Drug shortages is a complex issue in the field of global health, and China is also facing it. The aim of this study was to analyze the practice and attempts to solve drug shortage problem in Jiangsu Province in five years. Then put forward some suggestions for optimization.

METHODS: a qualitative method is approached to find the regional characteristics and causes of the drug shortage, with the drug shortage monitoring data between the year 2013 to 2017 from the Drug centralized purchasing platform in Jiangsu province. To find the performance of government measures dealing with the drug shortage, 35 Semi-structured interviews were performed in July-August 2017 to gather Information from representatives of hospital pharmacies, wholesalers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and local health authorities.

RESULTS: In Jiangsu province, the present drug shortage is characterized as : 1) the shortage was mainly in injections (36.5%) and tablets dosage forms (33.33%) ; 2) The shortage of low-cost medicines (The average daily cost of western medicine is no more than 3 RMB, and the Chinese medicine is no more than 5 RMB) accounts for 73% of the total shortage. The reasons for drug shortage identified from the experts’ interviews included the factors in drug manufacturing, drug distribution and procurement tendering. And the drug price is proposed as the most decisive issue .Some measures including building drug shortage information system, enlarging inventory of essential drugs, the questioning the manufacturers with malicious rises in price. As the performance of government measures, the varieties and the quantities of drug shortage have decreased by 37.7% and 68.0% respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: Information monitoring, enlarging drug inventory, and manufacturers price behavior alerting have played a positive role. However, managing the shortage of essential drugs and the scientific pricing of drugs need to be further optimized and improved.