Starting from December 1st! Strict inspection of public hospital bidding and tendering
Recently, ten departments including the Zhejiang Provincial Market Supervision Bureau jointly issued the “Detailed Rules for Fair Competition Review in the Field of Tendering and Bidding in Zhejiang Province” (hereinafter referred to as the “Detailed Rules”).
It is understood that these “Detailed Rules “has been officially implemented on December 1st, targeting prominent issues in the current bidding and tendering market such as opaque rules and discriminatory provisions, which deserve the key attention of all medical device professionals.
Questions and complaints keep coming!
“Tricks” frequently occur in the procurement of public hospitals
In recent years, with the implementation of the national policy on replacing old medical equipment with new ones, the scale of the national medical equipment procurement market has exceeded 100 billion yuan. However, the vicious cycle of “tendering – questioning – bid invalidation – re-tendering” has intensified.
– For example, the recently announced procurement of angiography machines by Zhenjiang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine was ordered to re-tender due to “parameter tendentious setting” after seven document revisions;
-The bid-winning result of the 4.3 million yuan equipment procurement of Xiaoyi Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital was revoked on suspicion of “tailor-making” terms for specific suppliers.
– The Chongqing Seventh People’s Hospital’s procurement of large medical equipment worth 67.02 million yuan also restarted the procurement process because the bidding documents contained discriminatory clauses…
All these cases reveal the common problems existing in the preparation of bidding documents by purchasers: non-standard preparation, parameter settings with obvious tendencies, and a review mechanism that is merely a formality. Ultimately, these issues increase administrative costs, delay the update process of medical resources, and cause great suffering to everyone in the industry.
Based on this, in order to establish a constraint mechanism from the source, the “Detailed Rules” issued by Zhejiang Province this time starts from various aspects such as review scope, review standards, review procedures, collaborative governance, and accountability, aiming to nip the risks of violating fair competition in the bud.
21 “Red Lines”!
New regulations on public hospital procurement have taken effect from the 1st of this month
It is understood that the “Detailed Rules” issued by Zhejiang Province this time not only target policy measures involving operators’ economic activities in the field of bidding and tendering, but also stipulate 46 review standards in 7 aspects.
At the same time, the “Detailed Rules” further clarify 21 types of restrictive situations that tenders are not allowed to set when formulating tender documents, including:
It is not allowed to exclude, restrict, or restrict in a disguised form the participation of foreign operators in local bidding and tendering activities. It is not allowed to set unreasonable public announcement time, response time limit, or force on-site registration/purchase of bidding documents. Differentiated review standards must not be set; Differentiated scores shall not be set based on the form of enterprise ownership, scale, registered address, or registered capital. It is not allowed to restrict bidding qualifications by means of detailed items or expression methods in the business scope of the business license, and so on……
The “Detailed Rules” emphasize that the tenderer shall conduct a fair competition review before publicly releasing the bidding documents, publicly release the written review conclusions, and accept social supervision.
This also means that starting from next month, all bidding documents of all public hospitals in the province must also comply with these “21 red lines” and be subject to social supervision. If they are violated, the reasons must be explained and approval from the reviewing unit must be obtained. This further strengthens the main responsibility of purchasers and standardizes procurement behaviors from the source.
Multiple measures:
Reform of rules in the procurement field of public hospitals nationwide
It is worth noting that in addition to these 21 “red lines” that must not be crossed, the “Detailed Rules” also propose to explore the use of artificial intelligence technology to build an intelligent platform for fair competition review, so as to realize automatic screening and early warning before the release of bidding documents, and prevent discriminatory clauses from the source.
In addition, the “Detailed Rules” also clearly stipulate that the handling of complaints and reports will be strengthened. Any unit or individual who believes that policy measures or bidding documents violate the relevant provisions of fair competition review has the right to report to the policy-making authority and its superior authority, and may also report to the market supervision and administration department.
As the construction of a unified national market accelerates, the bidding and tendering for medical equipment is undergoing an in-depth transformation from “procedural compliance” to “substantive fairness”.
For medical device companies, it is necessary to abandon the traditional thinking of “relationship marketing” and shift towards technological innovation and the building of compliance capabilities. For public hospitals, the establishment of professional procurement teams and the application of digital regulatory tools will be the key to improving procurement efficiency.
China is encouraging China end uses for more domestic products in latest years. Thus, more and more overseas manufacturers are planning localization in China. BradyKnows localization team has extensive experiences in facility establishment, audit, supplier evaluation, manufacturing, registration, and marketing in China. Pls feel free to let us know any questions on China entry via info@bradyknowsmedical.com
Source：Medical Device Distributors Alliance
Translated & edited：BradyknownSource: Medical Device Distributors Alliance
