DM Monitoring
TIANJIN: Zhang Jiawang (a pseudonym), 73, survived a heart attack last month with a successful surgery and recently returned home with his thankful family.
Had the episode arrived three months earlier, the surgery would have put the family, which is already experiencing financial strains, deep in debt. To save Zhang, the hospital used five coronary stents. The tiny stents, with an average weight of only 0.03 grams, are the main form of intervention used to keep arteries open in the treatment of coronary heart disease.
They were once priced at about 13,000 yuan (about 2,000 U.S. dollars) each in China. Today they cost only 700 yuan on average.
The massive price slash ensued from the initial round of the Chinese government’s centralized procurement program for high-value medical consumables in November 2020. According to the National Organized Joint Procurement Office of Medical Precious Consumables located in Tianjin, since Jan. 1, 2021, the discounted price of coronary stents has been applied in 27 provincial-level administrations in the country. In Zhang’s case, the five stents cost him around 3,200 yuan, 93 percent cheaper than the cost prior to the implementation of the new program. The whole surgery cost the family less than 50,000 yuan, less than half of what it used to cost. “It’s a great burden off the family’s shoulders,” said Hai Tang (a pseudonym), Zhang’s daughter-in-law. “We’re living in a good time.” According to a report published by the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases in September last year, the number of cardiovascular patients in China was estimated to stand at 330 million. From 2009 to 2019, the number of operations for coronary heart disease in China increased from 230,000 to more than 1 million a year.
An estimated 1.5 million coronary stents are used in China every year, which previously cost patients around 15 billion yuan collectively.
The bulk-buying program is part of government-led efforts to address inflated prices and other issues in the distribution of pricey medical supplies. The program circumvented intermediate links, such as middlemen and pharmaceutical sales representatives, to purchase the products directly from manufacturers, thus slashing the bloated price. “Through analyzing the cost and the financial reports of manufacturers, we find the price (about 700 yuan) is actually within a reasonable range,” said Zhong Dongbo, who heads the medical pricing and procurement department of the National Healthcare Security Administration.
