The healthcare security bureau orders! Strictly investigate the implementation of centralized procurement of consumables, targeting a large number of hospitals and distributors
On June 24th, the official website of the Healthcare Security Bureau of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region issued a Notice on Doing A Good Job in the Centralized Procurement of Drugs and Medical Consumables in 2024, announcing the key work and tasks in the centralized procurement of drugs and medical consumables throughout the region in 2024.
The fourth task clearly states that the entire process of centralized procurement execution will be included in the fund’s flight inspection:
Fully leverage the role of healthcare security funds in flight inspections, fully incorporate the execution of selected products from centralized procurement into our region’s flight inspections, and conduct inspections on the procurement, use, and settlement of selected products from centralized procurement by medical institutions.
In terms of inspection direction, the focus is on situations where the selected products have not been admitted to the hospital, the agreed purchase volume has not been completed, payment has not been received on time, the proportion of using high priced non selected products is high, there is an abnormal increase in the use of high priced alternative varieties, offline procurement, and the selected enterprises delay or refuse to supply.
That is to say, the implementation of centralized procurement of consumables will be a new focus of inspection. With the launch of this year’s medical insurance flight inspection action, it will sweep across hospitals and related pharmaceutical equipment enterprises in the entire region!
At the end of May, Inner Mongolia Healthcare Security Bureau released a procurement announcement for third-party professional service institutions for medical security fund flight inspections in 2024. On June 11th, the transaction announcement was officially released, with multiple companies including Beijing Donglian Guosheng Management Consulting Co., Ltd. winning the bid, indicating that a new round of flight inspections is about to begin.
According to the procurement document, the official plan is to carry out the flight inspection work in the whole region from June to December 2024 by adopting the mode of “mutual inspection of alliance cities and local co-operation” in the light of the actual situation of the autonomous region, and procuring the third-party professional service organisations to provide assistance.
The scope of the flying inspection is 12 co-ordinated districts in the region, and about 72 targets are expected to be inspected, including: 20 public healthcare institutions, 20 private healthcare institutions, 20 pharmacies and 12 operators.
Focused inspection: the use and management of the healthcare security fund and the construction and implementation of the relevant internal control system for the period from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2023, with retrospective inspections for previous years or extended inspections up to the year 2024, if necessary. That is, the time span can be up to two and a half years or even longer.
Not only that, the procurement documents also require that each third-party service organisation in the ABCD bidding section put in no less than 10 staff for this project, and include information personnel, clinical experts, financial experts and other personnel, who are respectively responsible for the detailed verification of key information such as medical records, healthcare security settlement data, and invoices for drugs and consumables.
Obviously, with the support of third-party organizations and various experts, the depth and intensity of the inspection for this round of consumables procurement are extraordinary.
In fact, not only Inner Mongolia, but also in recent years, with a focus on strict investigation of centralized procurement and enforcement, healthcare security bureaus in various regions have launched a new round of rectification storms.
On May 28th, the Healthcare Security Bureau of Zhongwei City in Ningxia issued a document, which established a special inspection team to conduct a special inspection on the procurement of consumables in public hospitals at or above the second level in the city. By listening to the introduction of the situation, comparing and analyzing platform data, and consulting the centralized procurement work ledger, the focus is on the procurement execution of the hospital in five aspects:
First, the net procurement rate of medical consumables in the past two years;
The second is the completion of the agreed procurement volume of centralised banded procurement of medical consumables;
Third, the situation of sunshine online procurement;
The fourth is the substantive bargaining situation of online procurement of medical consumables;
Fifth, the implementation of orthopaedic spine high-value medical consumables centralised procurement.
On 13 June, Healthcare Security Bureau of Qianshan City, Anhui Province released a news release to carry out a special inspection on the implementation of centralised procurement of high-value medical consumables in municipal hospitals and municipal hospitals of traditional Chinese medicine. Through on-site access to information, information system data comparison, check the hospital high-value medical consumables net procurement rate, the implementation of centralised purchasing and sequential progress, distribution enterprises back to the situation.
In addition, it is more noteworthy that in this storm of inspection, the scope of supervision began to expand from the hospital to the outside: not only hospitals, in the supply and distribution of manufacturers and agents have also become the object of strict investigation.
On June 21st, the Kaqi Healthcare Security Bureau conducted an inspection on the implementation of selected pharmaceutical products in the national organized centralized procurement of public medical institutions in the entire Kaqi.The rectification scope mainly includes centralized and volume based procurement of insulin, the ninth batch of drugs, artificial joints, coronary stents, and spine categories organized by the state.
In addition to focusing on routine details such as the entry of selected products into hospitals, offline procurement, procurement without reporting quantities, and the extensive use of non-collected products, this action. It also simultaneously verified the proportion of high-priced non-collected consumables, such as bone-filling mesh bags and expanding orthotics, procured by hospitals in vertebroplasty, verified whether the process of entering hospitals and decision-making were in compliance, whether the agents and manufacturing and operating enterprises were linked to hospital-related personnel with interests, and whether they were centrally used by a small number of doctors.
In the special inspection of the implementation of national procurement for artificial joints organized by the Beijing Healthcare Security Bureau in July last year, hospitals were required to negotiate with distributors who supply more non selected sets of products after self inspection, especially in response to the non-standard practices of “restructuring” components, mixed use of selected components, and high price sales of non selected components. They should be required to make a written commitment. For those who refuse to rectify, the selected enterprise can be requested to replace the distributor!
Undoubtedly, with the implementation of the full chain rectification, the blind spots in regulation have become smaller and smaller. It is necessary for both downstream medical institutions and upstream pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors to handle this large-scale investigation with caution.
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Source：Medical Device Dealers Alliance
Translated & edited： Bradyknow
