Multiple regions have issued new regulations, advancing the price governance of listed medical consumables in depth.

Since the end of 2024 to 2025, many provinces across the country have been intensively promoting the linkage management of medical consumable prices, standardizing market order through measures such as suspending listings and dynamic pricing. Recently, the Heilongjiang Public Resources Trading Center released the "Notice on Conducting Price Linkage and Data Governance for Listed Medical Consumables" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice").

The "Notice" shows that all relevant enterprises should compare their national listing prices for medical consumables. For those not at the lowest national price, they need to submit a "Listing Dynamic Adjustment Application - Price Adjustment" on the Heilongjiang Medical Insurance Service Platform (Procurement Subsystem) to adjust to the lowest national price. Enterprises that fail to complete the price linkage and data governance by March 20th, resulting in a listing price higher than the lowest national price, will be suspended from listing after verification and confirmation, and subject to credit evaluation.

It's not just Heilongjiang; medical consumable procurement platforms across the country have launched a wave of rectification efforts for listed medical consumables.

Multiple provinces, including Xinjiang, Hebei, Hubei, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, have launched key governance efforts on the online listing prices of medical consumables. In the past, although both the National Medical Security Administration and local governments repeatedly emphasized the policy of price linkage for lower prices, due to the lack of interoperability between provincial procurement systems and the inconvenience of verification, regions typically required companies to voluntarily report price changes after new lower prices appeared in other provinces. This left room for some companies to conceal or falsely report their prices.

With the gradual implementation and improvement of the new procurement platform, in recent months, the comparison work on the online listing prices of medical consumables has significantly accelerated across various regions. Among them, Shandong Province suspended the online listings of 23,910 products that failed to reduce prices in time in December last year, involving multiple fields such as orthopedics, in vitro diagnostic reagents, and surgery. The listed products are not allowed to apply for online listing again in Shandong within two years. In January this year, Hubei Province also launched a clearance action, involving a total of over 100,000 medical consumable products, covering more than ten categories including coronary dilatation balloons, disposable precision infusion sets, and intravascular ultrasound diagnostic catheters, causing a stir in the industry.

Previously, several industry insiders told 21st Century Business Herald, "For pharmaceutical and medical device companies, once they are delisted due to violations, the cost could be losing the entire public hospital market."

New Cycle of Medical Supply Prices

The deepening of the coordinated governance of medical supply prices is against the backdrop of the continuous expansion of the scope of centralized procurement of medical supplies led by the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA), with the effect of 'price bottoming out' becoming increasingly significant.

2024 is a major year for the centralized procurement of medical supplies. In addition to the fifth round of national-level centralized procurement, several key projects guided by the NHSA, including seven major nationwide joint procurements, will be implemented in 2025. Starting from March, many regions across the country have begun implementing the results of the centralized volume-based procurement of medical supplies, covering nine major categories such as cochlear implants, ultrasonic scalpel heads, and pre-filled catheter flushers.

Wang Qiang, an expert in medical device marketing management, told 21st Century Business Herald that provincial and alliance-level centralized procurements now cover a large number of medical supply products, and at the national level, there may be a preference for continuing to conduct centralized procurements on those medical supplies that provide more substantial benefits to patients.

The price of a single cochlear implant has dropped from 200,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan, the lowest price for peripheral vascular stents is only 2,000 yuan, the average price of breast rotary needles has been reduced from 3,000 yuan to 821 yuan, and the prices of ultrasonic scalpel heads and pre-filled catheter flushers, which had already seen a 70% reduction in the first centralized procurement, have on average decreased by another 12.18%. These reductions not only mean that the expansion of centralized procurement has directly led to the bottoming out of medical consumables prices, but also mark the end of the era of excessive profits in the medical consumables industry.

The expansion of centralized procurement, coupled with low-price linkage, will impact the existing market structure of medical consumables. Based on past experience, companies selected in centralized procurement are mostly industry leaders, who can lower prices through economies of scale and technological reserves, and their winning products are expected to see significant growth in sales volume. For example, Peijia Medical mentioned in its earnings announcement that its neurointerventional business coil products were selected in multiple provincial and inter-provincial alliance centralized procurements, leading to a rapid increase in sales volume.

A research report by Huaxi Securities shows that between 2020 and 2022, when centralized procurement policies primarily covered only one type of product, coils, the market share of four domestic giants increased rapidly from 3.85% to 17.00%.

Weak enterprises, on the other hand, face a double squeeze. Due to their small scale and weak cost control capabilities, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are caught in a dilemma where price reductions lead directly to losses. For instance, after multiple large-scale alliance centralized procurement programs were implemented in 2025, the prices of orthopedic and cardiovascular consumables generally decreased by more than 50%, with some products being forced to withdraw from the market due to the inability to bear cost pressures. For these related companies, withdrawing from the market might also help them to focus more energy and resources on upgrading the performance of high-volume products and maintaining distribution channels.

This is also in line with the goal orientation of the centralized procurement policy, which aims to bring the prices of high-value medical consumables back to reasonable levels, reduce the burden on patients, and guide medical institutions to use them properly. The National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) previously issued a document stating that in the coming period, the NHSA will carry out batch-based regulation of inspection and testing prices based on the decline in procurement costs for examination equipment and test reagents; this will create room in the budget to support truly innovative, high-level technologies that meet urgent clinical needs, allowing more new technologies, equipment, and consumables to be rapidly introduced into clinical applications, thereby benefiting the public through medical technology.

In the new price cycle, companies with genuine innovative advantages are gradually coming to the forefront. Ping An Securities points out that in markets with a favorable competitive landscape, low domestic production rates, high innovation requirements, and rich product tiers, even if centralized procurement (集采) is implemented, the impact on prices is likely to be relatively small. The statistics from China Research & Development Institute also show that the average price reduction for the seventh batch of centralized procurement was 62%, but leading enterprises achieved a counter-trend increase in gross profit margin through intelligent transformation. For example, Mindray Medical's smart infusion pump consumables have realized real-time flow monitoring, reducing medical accident rates by 90%; AK Medical's customized knee replacement consumables cost has been reduced to 60% of traditional processes; MicroPort, through the development of the fourth-generation biodegradable stent, maintained its market dominance despite a 92% price drop after coronary stent centralized procurement...

The competitive logic of the consumables market has changed. In the past, the competition model of acquiring market share through low-price strategies and relationship marketing is no longer sustainable. To survive, companies must either control costs to the extreme and survive on scale within existing profits, or focus on innovation to gain pricing power through technological barriers.

A Unified National Strategy

In the large-scale consumables centralized procurement mentioned earlier, the relevant requirements for price linkage were all written in the procurement documents.

The National Medical Insurance Administration previously revealed that it is actively promoting the rectification work of the issues concerning significant differences between manufacturing costs and selling prices of some medicines and medical supplies transferred by relevant departments. At the same time, it is organizing inter-provincial price coordination and standardization efforts to address the problems of unfair high prices and discriminatory high prices for certain medicines across different provinces.

Previously, due to a complex variety of consumable products, inconsistent coding, and lack of information exchange among provinces, it was difficult to regulate the prices of medical consumables. With the establishment and improvement of the unified medical insurance coding and information platform—the National Medical Insurance Information Platform's Drug and Medical Consumables Procurement Management Subsystem (referred to as the "Procurement Subsystem")—these issues have been resolved.

In September last year, the National Medical Insurance Administration stated in the "Letter of Reply to Proposal No. 04813 (Medical and Health Category 419) of the Second Session of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference" that the National Medical Insurance Administration will achieve nationwide joint review and processing of online matters through the transformation of the technical platform and strengthening the overall coordination of operations in all provinces across the country.

First, enterprises apply for listing through the national unified portal to one or multiple provinces, submitting product and price information. The information is submitted once, verified by one province, and then shared nationwide; second, after the initial review province receives the enterprise's application for listing, it processes the listing business simultaneously. If subsequently listed in other provinces, the same information will not be reviewed again; third, a database of listed medical product prices is established, with dynamic updates on the listing price information of each province.

After the full launch of the procurement subsystems in various regions, their listing work will achieve interconnection, allowing the sharing and comparison of listing price information between different provinces. This plays a significant role in the comparison and monitoring of procurement prices for consumables.

For example, in October last year, the Shaanxi Public Resources Trading Center organized a price comparison project for medicines and medical consumables. Using the data from the Shaanxi platform as a benchmark, comparisons were made with platforms in Guangxi, Shandong, and Anhui. For products found not to have followed the requirement of linking to the lowest out-of-province listing price, their listing qualifications were canceled, and applications for listing these products would not be accepted within a year. In February this year, Shaanxi issued another notice, removing a batch of low-priced consumables that did not link to the lowest price after a comparison with Hebei.

Not only that, the management of consumable prices can further extend to the hospital end.

The "Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Centralized Procurement of Medical Consumables through Sunshine Listing" by the Hunan Provincial Medical Insurance Bureau mentions: The procurement management system regularly collects information on the listed prices of medical consumables from all provinces across the country, compares and analyzes the listed prices of the products, and provides reminders and adjustments to their listed prices; it also compares and analyzes the varieties, quantities, and prices of products purchased by public medical institutions, and provides reminders, warnings, and adjustments to their purchase prices.

It is worth noting that the delisting of consumable products is also linked to the credit evaluation of enterprises. In the "Notice on Strengthening and Improving the Credit Evaluation Work for Pharmaceutical Prices and Procurement," the National Medical Insurance Administration points out that there should be enhanced coordination between credit evaluation and price governance. Once a province identifies the inflated price space of a discredited product, other provinces should be promptly notified to pay attention.

Currently, the low-price linkage model has become a standard feature in major centralized procurements. The effectiveness of "one province negotiating, the whole country sharing" is significantly promoting the formation of a unified national strategy.