On November 15, the Blue Whale News reported (Journalist Tu Jun) that in order to optimize the distribution system, improve the efficiency and quality of medical consumables supply, and further alleviate the burden on patients, multiple regions have recently issued documents to massively clean up the qualifications of consumable distributors, including leading pharmaceutical distribution companies such as sinopharm, jointown pharmaceutical group, shanghai pharmaceutical, and china resources.

Taking zhejiang province as an example, on September 13, the zhejiang province medical insurance bureau issued a public notice regarding the cancellation of distribution relationships for medical consumables production (supply) enterprises, proposing to cancel 695 groups of medical consumables distribution relationships all at once. According to the list published, the distributors that had their relationships canceled were primarily local zhejiang distribution companies, with numerous subsidiaries under large pharmaceutical distribution giants also listed, including: sinopharm holdings zhejiang co., ltd., sinopharm group zhejiang medical instruments co., ltd., zhejiang jointown pharmaceutical group medical instruments co., ltd., shanghai pharmaceutical holdings (ningbo) medical instruments co., ltd., taizhou shanghai pharmaceutical co., ltd., huadong medicine co., ltd., huadong medicine huzhou co., ltd., huadong medicine co., ltd. equipment and agent branch, among others.

In fact, since the beginning of the year, zhejiang province's "three streams into one" consumables procurement platform has been actively taking actions, and has now announced nine batches of lists for the cancellation of relationships with consumables distribution enterprises, covering over 5,900 groups of distribution relationships.

Some industry insiders told Lanjing Finance that some distribution companies have been relieved of their supply relationship because they have a distribution relationship but no actual business, as well as adjustments to normal business channels. It may also be due to inefficient and redundant distribution relationships that do not meet assessment standards.

On January 12, the National Medical Insurance Administration office released a notice regarding the enhancement of supply guarantee work for selected products in centralized procurement of medical drugs. In terms of distribution, the notice also clarifies that for medical institutions with untimely responses to orders, significantly low distribution rates, or concentrated supplier feedback on supply issues, early detection and proactive warnings must be ensured, and related enterprises should be supervised to rectify within a set deadline through reminders, interviews, and warnings; enterprises that fail to rectify in a timely manner or to the appropriate extent, or that accumulate negative scoring due to supply issues to a certain level, may be subjected to credit ratings as per regulations, and severe cases should be penalized according to the relevant provisions of the procurement bidding documents.

Not just in zhejiang province, the large-scale cleaning of medical consumable distributors' qualifications has frequently occurred across the country in recent years. On May 22, the Liaoning provincial drug and medical consumables centralized procurement website issued a notice, explicitly stating that 1,937 pharmaceutical and medical consumables distribution companies will be removed from the Liaoning province drug and medical consumables distribution company database, and their distribution qualifications will be suspended until the end of 2024.

This includes 744 companies that did not establish distribution relationships within the assessment period of 2023, and 1,193 distribution enterprises that established distribution relationships but did not undertake distribution tasks, with multiple subsidiaries under giants like jointown pharmaceutical group, china resources, and sinopharm also included in the suspension list.

It is noteworthy that some regions have directly introduced new regulations, initiating a "major examination" for delivery companies. The Fujian Provincial Medical Insurance Bureau has proposed that starting from June 1, 2024, the performance of delivery companies will be assessed monthly: any shortages caused by the delivery companies themselves due to reasons such as untimely stocking, failure to effectively address product delivery issues reported by medical institutions, or penalties from the drug regulatory authority due to quality issues in the product delivery and transportation process, will all result in points being deducted. If the assessment score falls below 60 points, there will be a risk of penalties, and in severe cases, the qualification for delivery could be revoked.