The impact of national centralized drug procurement on health expenditures for lung cancer inpatients: A difference-in-differences analysis in a large tertiary hospital in China

• DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.956823
• Publication Date: 2022-08-12T07:01:32Z
• Authors: Yuan-jin Zhang; Yan Ren; Quan Zheng; Jing Tan; Ming-hong Yao; Yun-xiang Huang; Xia Zhang; Kang Zou; Shao-yang Zhao; Xin Sun
• Keywords: Spillover effect

The availability and affordability of medicines remain major health challenges around the world. In March 2019, Chinese government introduced a pilot National Centralized Drug Procurement (NCDP) program in order to reduce drug prices improve effective safe medicines. This study aimed assess impact NCDP policy on expenditures cancer patients. Using inpatient discharge records from large hospital city, we performed difference-in-differences design estimate change before after policy. We found that implementation was associated with significant decrease total (14.13%) (20.75%) per admission. There were also reductions non-drug-related expenditures, including 7.65% service 38.28% diagnosis 25.31% consumable material However, 107.97% increase traditional medicine expenditures. Overall, provided evidence has achieved its goals high-quality affordable healthcare. lung patients revealed continuous decline, may have spillover effects other healthcare Further studies are needed evaluate long-term policy-related outcomes.