A new wave of price cuts? Seven ways of drugstores to fight against risks

Recently, the state organized the joint procurement office for centralized procurement and use of drugs issued the national centralized procurement document, 33 varieties were selected into the second batch of national drug "centralized procurement" list, covering drugs for major chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, as well as anti-tumor and rare diseases According to the work arrangement of centralized procurement, the bid opening will be held on January 17, 2020 to produce the results of the proposed selection, and patients from all over the country will use the second batch of centralized procurement of selected drugs in April this year Before that, many leading companies had followed the lead procurement closely, and implemented relevant prices in December last year With the determination of the second batch of lead procurement varieties, the "price reduction tide" of drugstores will be expanded in an all-round way On November 15, 2018, the "4 + 7" urban drug centralized procurement document was released, and the first batch of pilot drug centralized procurement was officially implemented; on September 1, 2019, the alliance regional drug centralized procurement document announced that the volume of centralized procurement was promoted from 11 pilot cities to 25 provinces, including Anhui, Hubei, Hainan, etc., and the price of 25 selected varieties dropped by 25% based on the average price reduction of 52% of the first batch; on October 24, 2019 Zhejiang Medical Insurance Bureau issued the Interim Measures for the administration of designated pharmacies of basic medical insurance of Zhejiang Province (Draft for comments), which requires that "drugs paid by medical insurance must be purchased uniformly through the provincial drug and equipment procurement platform; the sales price of drugs in designated pharmacies should be increased appropriately based on the medical insurance payment standard of public hospitals"; on November 20, 2019, the executive meeting of the State Council deployed to further promote drug collection One of the core contents of China's procurement and use is to "expand the scope of centralized procurement and use of drug varieties" In this cold season, people seem to see: the pace of expanding capacity with volume collection is approaching drugstores step by step Is the winter of drug retail really coming? At the same time with our season, the winter of drug retail industry is coming In the industry, worried about the possibility that Medicare drugs in pharmacies may be included in the centralized purchase and limited to a certain markup rate sales, Shanghai Pharmaceutical centralized bidding and purchasing department put up a work tip on the official website about "comprehensive online open price negotiation of drugs in pharmacies limited" and other related matters, and pushed the comprehensive price negotiation information (the first batch) of 701 drugs in pharmacies limited to the inquiry and price negotiation system "Work tips" requires that all drugs sold by pharmaceutical enterprises in designated pharmacies (medical insurance counters) of medical insurance shall be priced by designated pharmacies of medical insurance and drug manufacturers, and the price shall be disclosed on the sunshine platform According to the price negotiation rules given in the notice on the full implementation of open price negotiation for drug online purchasing issued by Shanghai last year, medical insurance drugstores will set up a yellow line and a red line price negotiation reminder - that is, the 701 limited drugstores must be fully online for open price negotiation and the prices are effectively controlled The open price negotiation of medical insurance drugs on the Internet in drugstores is regarded as the solution provided by the relevant departments to avoid the phenomenon of "price hanging upside down" in the procurement of "volume purchase" in medical insurance drugstores, which helps to change the situation of unbalanced purchase prices inside and outside the hospital However, due to the "bargaining rules of red and yellow line" of the clamp, how to help the pharmacy effect remains to be observed In addition, if the future expansion of centralized purchase will be fully implemented in hospitals across the country, and all medical insurance drugs will be included in the scope of centralized purchase (this is a high probability event), then Shanghai's "limited drugstore drugs fully online and open price negotiation" is only a transitional policy, and ultimately it will be centralized purchase If this becomes a fact, it will undoubtedly pour another basin of cold water on the already cool drug retail industry Data shows that in the first half of 2019, the sales volume of drugs in China's drug retail market was 202.2 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 4.7%, 3.8 percentage points lower than the growth rate of 7.5% in 2018; in the first quarter of 2019, the total number of pharmacies in China was 468600, 20465 lower than that in 2018, 4.2% lower; among them, 5604 chain stores and 14861 single drugstores were reduced, and it is expected that the number of drug stores to be reduced in the whole year will be more reasonable View - the sales volume of the pharmaceutical retail industry and the number of drugstores have both declined, and the pharmaceutical retail terminal has entered a difficult period It is impossible for an industry to maintain a high-speed development level all the time Slow down appropriately in time to keep the hot money cool, and the laggards will be eliminated, which is more conducive to the healthy development of the industry in the future Even if it comes in the way of winter, if it is well prepared, orderly and timely recuperated, it will be a vigorous spring when the next year's flowers bloom From this point of view, it is not necessary to worry too much about the coming winter of China's drug retail industry, but the main product composition, price system and sales mode of drugstores are facing a major reshuffle, and the marketing mode, profit mode and development concept must be adjusted and changed, which has become a consensus This is not the first "winter" in China's drug retail industry in recent years In the second half of 2008, influenced by the rise of domestic prices and the negative effects of the financial crisis, 15% - 20% of the performance of the domestic pharmaceutical retail industry declined, and the theory of "drugstores spend the winter" became more and more popular By 2014, 80000 single drugstores in China had disappeared in one year, which again attracted the exclamation of "winter is coming" in the industry Different from the "winter" in the past, the pharmacy industry of our country is in a higher development stage and level this time The total scale of the industry is not the same as before, and changes may hurt the muscles and bones and even survive The whole industry should have sufficient psychological preparation and expectation This "winter" is a little cold In addition to the cold wind and rain that the industry has long been accustomed to and basically adapted to, there is another "extremely deep cold" weather: intensive mining and expansion On November 15, 2018, the "4 + 7 urban drug centralized procurement document" was officially released on the website of Shanghai Institute of pharmacy This is the first time to organize the pilot of drug centralized procurement at the national level, and the new term "4 + 7 with volume centralized procurement" has attracted people's attention for the first time On September 1, 2019, when people thought that it would take a long time for "4 + 7 belt volume centralized purchase" pilot to be summarized and comprehensively promoted, Shanghai Sunshine pharmaceutical purchasing network officially announced "centralized purchase document of drugs in alliance region", which pushed the belt volume centralized purchase from 11 pilot cities at the beginning to 25 provinces including Anhui, Hubei and Hainan With the result of the second batch of belt volume purchase, the company has made a successful selection According to the announcement, the industry has seen that the price of 25 selected varieties has dropped 25% on the basis of the average price reduction of 52% in the first batch If the centralized purchase is limited to the existing scope of provinces and cities and the existing 25 varieties framework, then its impact on pharmacies can be controlled, so as not to bring the whole industry into winter However, from the comprehensive judgment of more than one year's process of centralized mining since November last year, the state's push on the goal of controlling medical insurance fees, and the current and future situation, all the "conjectures" about the expansion of centralized mining are likely to become reality: the continuous expansion and upgrading of centralized mining with capacity, in addition to the now clear 25 provinces and cities, other provinces and cities will soon join in, and soon cover the whole country; the centralized mining with capacity will go to all levels of public The establishment of hospitals will gradually promote, including the medical insurance drugs of private hospitals; the centralized purchase with volume will cover all the medical insurance drugs that can be increased, rather than limited to the first 25 selected varieties; the medical insurance drugs that can be increased in volume managed by pharmacies will also be included in the centralized purchase in some form; the medical insurance drugs that cannot be increased will be implemented by referring to the price reduction range of similar drugs As an example, the Shanghai Pharmaceutical centralized bidding and purchasing department requires 701 "Limited pharmacy drugs to be fully put on the Internet for public price negotiation" On November 20, 2019, the executive meeting of the State Council deployed to further promote the centralized procurement and use of drugs One of the core is to "expand the scope of centralized procurement and use of drugs" so that the industry can see more clearly, and the expansion of capacity with centralized procurement is gradually approaching the pharmacy Since it is possible to break one's muscles and bones, or even to survive by changing one's bones, "winter" must be cautious and steady In recent years, it is necessary for drugstores to adopt strategic defense to maintain the aggressive expansion trend There is always a popular saying in the stock market: better to miss than to make mistakes At the recently concluded China drugstore Summit Forum, Lan Bo, chairman of Yunnan jianzhijia, quoted this view: if in the past 20 years, everyone would rather be wrong than Miss (the opportunity), then in the new era, we would rather be missed than make mistakes The reason is simple, because in a weak market, the cost of error correction is very high Defensive strategy is a relatively passive and conservative development strategy, which refers to the strategy that enterprises no longer rush to expand the scale or stop the continuous expansion and development of certain businesses due to major changes in the external environment, large negative conditions in policy conditions or deterioration of their own business conditions It is obviously different from the contraction, stability and growth (expansion) strategy The implementation of defensive strategy is only for a short time, and its basic purpose is to continue the original development after reasonable pursuit of benefits and avoiding disadvantages, reduction of positive conflicts, active optimization of resources allocation, strengthening the use of capital resources, improving cost control and anti risk ability, that is to say, strategic defense, but in fact, to retreat for progress, time for space; from the perspective of various business indicators of drugstores, revenue The growth rate will obviously slow down or even decrease, but the decrease rate of benefit, net profit and other indicators is significantly lower than that of income, and even may be flat or increased Strategic defense is mainly reflected in the following aspects: ① slow down in scale expansion, pharmacies urgently need to carefully evaluate the operation quality, asset status, future development, etc., on this basis, re formulate or revise the development strategy and objectives, most of which will adopt stable and stable strategies ② If the expansion must be carried out, the relatively conservative strategy is usually adopted in the form of expansion In addition to limiting the subject value to an acceptable and risk controllable range, the way of acquiring 100% equity is not generally adopted, but only controlling 51% equity (such as the recent acquisition of Nantong Jianghai pharmacy by dashanlin), or the way of joining in the expansion For unlisted pharmacies, equity exchange can also be adopted ③ At the same time of extension and deceleration, we should strengthen the growth of connotation and practice our internal skills so as to reduce the internal problems and chronic diseases that have been generated or accumulated for many years, strengthen the internal training, and wait for more vigorous development in the next year The defensive strategy has the characteristics of short-term and transitional Its fundamental purpose is not to save money and stop development in the long run, but to accumulate strength for future development, that is to say, the purpose of taking back the fist is to attack more forcefully in the future First, drugstores pay more attention to "output ratio" in marketing promotion and daily sales, and gain profit value-added space by providing customers with specialized services, value-added services, medication guidance, health education, indicator testing, follow-up visits, free drug seeking and other special services, with the focus on effective and profitable sales Second, to improve the competitiveness and anti risk ability as the main purpose, hard work It mainly includes improving category management, display management, member management, performance evaluation and other management capabilities, seizing the opportunity to optimize pharmacist configuration, and doing a good job in staff professional skills training Third, constantly explore new business models with their own characteristics Actively strive for the qualification of designated chronic diseases and the service ability of difficult diseases, create conditions to open telemedicine channels, strengthen cooperation with medical institutions, doctors, experts and online hospitals, and actively undertake the opportunities brought by the outflow of prescriptions Actively test new retail models such as scene retail and experience sales Fourth, pay equal attention to both open source and throttling, and increase new growth through multiple channels