The universal name for healthcare security consumables will be launched by the end of September

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7 types of consumables database will be launched at the end of September

The code for orthopedic implant consumables will be released

On September 12th, the National Healthcare Security Administration held a live streaming event to interpret the classification rules of medical consumables for healthcare security ,focusing on the interpretation of 7 categories of consumables such as vascular intervention stents that have completed classification adjustments.

In April of this year, the National Healthcare Security Administration announced the classification, codes, and healthcare security generic names for 7 categories of medical consumables covered by healthcare security, including vascular interventional stents, vascular interventional balloons, anastomosis (suturing) devices and accessories, artificial organ tissues and supporting materials, non-vascular interventional stents, non-vascular interventional balloons, and implantable cardiac rhythm managers.

After adjustment and revision, 4 first-level categories, 21 second-level categories, 104 third-level categories, and 416 material characteristics have been formed, including “non-vascular interventional therapy materials”, “vascular interventional therapy materials”, “artificial organs, tissues and supporting materials”, and “staplers and accessories”.

According to the introduction of the live broadcast event, the first batch of databases for 7 categories of medical consumables that have been adjusted was released on June 28 this year, requiring all localities to fully implement them by the end of September. The research work on the coding of orthopedic implant consumables has been basically completed, and it will be released in due course. For a long time, medical consumables enterprises have had a relatively high degree of freedom in naming their products. There are many phenomena in the market where different objects have the same name and the same object has different names, making it difficult for product names to meet the requirements of accurate and efficient identification.

With the framework clearly defined, the coding of medical consumables is moving towards national unification. It is divided into 17 first-level categories, 174 second-level categories, and 1,046 third-level categories based on disciplines, uses, parts, and functions, as well as 8,962 categories for consumable materials and specifications. According to the disclosure from the live broadcast event of the National Healthcare Security Administration, as of the end of August 2025, 103,600 consumable classification codes have been released, covering 15,000 enterprises, 91,600 registration certificates, 140,900 single commodities, and 13,379,600 specifications and models. In recent years, medical healthcare security information platforms have been successively launched in various provinces across the country, and the healthcare security consumables information database has been simultaneously implemented and applied nationwide.

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Helping healthcare security payment management drive product innovation and access

Based on the standards of unified coding, the management of consumables has undergone an all-round upgrade, covering multiple links such as bidding and procurement, payment and settlement, price monitoring, and fund supervision.

Taking price monitoring as an example. In the past, it was extremely difficult to compare the prices of products with similar names, as it required a lot of time to distinguish differences in product materials, features, and other aspects. Under the framework of the new version of medical consumables classification codes, it can quickly correspond to specific product specifications and models, and rely on the sub-subsystem of national procurement and recruitment to achieve accurate monitoring of the prices of products of the same type. According to the on-site introduction by the Price and Procurement Center of the National Healthcare Security Administration, since the medical consumables coding for healthcare security  was put into use, the center has successively carried out price monitoring work on medical consumables with large clinical usage and high social attention among those included in the national centralized volume-based procurement. It has checked for abnormal values that significantly deviate from the monitoring results, urged and guided enterprises to correct unfair high prices and discriminatory high prices, and promoted the prices to return

to a more fair and reasonable range. In addition, in the past, phenomena such as “one material with multiple names” and “one name with multiple specifications” were relatively common, posing objective difficulties for healthcare security fund payment and supervision. In September 2023, the “Notice of the National Healthcare Security Administration on Doing a Good Job in the Payment Management of Medical Consumables under Basic healthcare security” mentioned that it is necessary to take the healthcare security medical consumables classification and coding database as the basis, determine a naming standard suitable for healthcare security payment management, gradually formulate generic name naming rules for different categories of medical consumables, and compile healthcare security generic names, which will serve as the basis for the next step of healthcare security payment management. For categories of consumables with well-developed management of generic names, the state will gradually formulate a national unified healthcare security catalog and gradually expand the scope of consumable categories covered by the national catalog.

In addition to enabling regulation and meeting clinical needs, the adjustment of healthcare security classification for medical consumables also directly drives the innovative development of the pharmaceutical industry.

At the meeting, the person in charge of the project team of the Chinese Society of Social Security stated that the revision of the classification of medical consumables fully respects and encourages technological innovation in the field of medical devices. It provides a clear and standardized classification path for new products with significant clinical value, which helps guide resources to concentrate in the field of innovation and promotes the development of new productive forces in medical devices.

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：Saibo Lan Medical Devices
Translated & edited：Bradyknown=