Under the background of the inclusion of many pharmaceutical consumables in the collection, the 2021 of medical representatives has been in a dilemma, and resignation and transformation have become the norm.
If GlaxoSmithKline's bribery in 2013 made it difficult for medical representatives to enter the hospital, then 2021 is a year of transformation and unemployment for medical representatives.
Industry changes
"The impact of collective procurement on the pharmaceutical equipment industry is getting bigger and bigger, and it is more beneficial to innovative pharmaceutical companies." Geng Le, a medical representative who has been working for three years, told the health community that his company has a lot of exclusive and first products, so the impact of collection is relatively small, because the product is exclusive, the probability will not enter the collection, and the probability of being affected is relatively small.
But at the same time, Geng Le also revealed to the health community that the price of drugs after the collection was greatly reduced, and the medical representatives who had the collection products were faced with the need to jump to other enterprises or choose products that did not participate in the collection.
Lin Sheng, a medical representative of a foreign pharmaceutical company, said peacefully that 2021 is a year of struggle, because the products he is responsible for are not within the scope of collection, and the competitors are not there, so they are not affected by the collection. However, the epidemic has caused patients to return from Beijing to the local area, and most of the patients are treated at home, and the indicators are not easy to complete.
"This year has been a year of displacement for me." Li Mi, a medical representative who has been practicing for ten years, told the health community that in 2021, the personal keyword should be ordinary heart. The vigorous promotion of this year's collection policy has brought certain troubles to the work, so it is even more necessary to maintain a normal heart and deal with everything calmly in order to have the energy to meet the indicators of the next year.
In fact, this year, centralized procurement continued to advance under high pressure. At the beginning of the new year, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Promoting the Normalization and Institutionalization of centralized drug procurement (Guo Ban Fa [2021] No. 2)" to promote the normalization and institutionalization of centralized drug procurement.
In the middle of the year, the fifth batch of national organizations organized drug collection and bidding, and 61 kinds of drugs were successfully purchased, with an average price reduction of 56%.
Subsequently, the collection entered the IVD field. On August 19, anhui provincial public medical institutions released the negotiation and negotiation announcement of the centralized procurement of clinical laboratory reagents, announcing the official start of the procurement of ivD in the field of IVD.
On September 14, the artificial joint of high-value medical consumables landed, 48 companies participated in the quotation competition, and finally 44 were successfully selected, and the selection rate reached 92%. The average price of the hip joint to be selected fell from 35,000 yuan to about 7,000 yuan, and the average price of the knee joint fell from 32,000 yuan to about 5,000 yuan, with an average price reduction of 82%.
By 2025, more than 500 drugs will be collected and more than 5 categories of high-value medical consumables will be included. On September 29, the General Office of the State Council issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Medical Security, an important document for medical insurance work in the next four years, deepening the reform of the centralized procurement system for drugs and medical consumables, which was emphasized. Clarify the varieties of centralized procurement of drugs, reaching more than 500 by 2025, and the centralized procurement of high-value medical consumables will reach more than 5 categories.
On November 26, the sixth batch of national drug collection (insulin special) was officially launched, with an average price reduction of nearly 50% and a maximum reduction of 74%. According to the estimated size of the domestic insulin market of 28 billion, it is expected that medical insurance or patients can reduce spending by 10 billion yuan.
At the end of the year, Jicai entered the field of proprietary Chinese medicine for the first time. On December 21, 19 provinces in Hubei Province collected and opened bids for proprietary Chinese medicines, 193 companies passed the audit to participate in the election, and 111 products from 97 companies were selected, with a selection rate of 62%, an average decrease of 42.27%, and a maximum drop of 82.63%. Netizens joked that in 2021, the era of collection and collection has come in full swing, and everything can be collected.
"Since the centralized procurement, medical representatives have lost their jobs." Wang Jingming, president of the China Health Group, told the health community that now there is no need to talk about public hospitals, even if private hospitals do not participate in the collection, it is almost difficult to take drugs, some drugs have not been able to get, and there is no room for medical representatives in the circulation of drugs.
The "2020 Annual Report of Medical Representatives" shows that because of the two-vote system, the consistency evaluation of generic drugs, the national collection, the payment by disease type and other policies, the psychological pressure of many medical representatives has been increased, and the liquidity of the overall industry has increased.
Sample data show that only 21.22% of the medical representatives have taken root in one enterprise, 43.26% have experienced 2-4 enterprises, and 35.52% have experienced more than 4 enterprises.
Even if there is no idea of job hopping, but there have been a part of the medical representatives to start part-time, the data shows that 27.17% of the medical representatives have part-time conditions, 3.49% of the representatives are starting a business, that is to say, more than 30% of the medical representatives are not satisfied with being a full-time representative and are looking for a new way out.
Transformation of pharmacological generation
Frozen three feet, not a day's cold. I have to say that for a long time before the pharmaceutical representatives, the pharmaceutical sales model based on human relations and gold sales to rebates has brought a great negative impact to the industry.
For how medical representatives should be transformed, Xing Yuhua, vice president of the Fourth People's Hospital of Langfang, believes that the responsibility of medical representatives is to introduce new drugs to doctors, tell doctors about the characteristics and side effects of drugs, and have a role in promoting doctors' understanding of new drugs. "Medical representatives do not need to exist in terms of commercial bribery, and the direction of transformation should be academic promotion."
Zhang Jianhong, president of Ningxia Yanchi County Medical and Health General Hospital, told the health community that there are currently hundreds of thousands of medical representatives in the country, and with the introduction of a series of policies such as collection and procurement, these medical representatives must be transformed.
Zhang Jianhong also believes that in the next stage, the role of medical representatives is to recommend drugs, for example, the emergence of some new drugs, clinicians do not necessarily have a strong understanding of new drugs, and medical representatives can play a role in training doctors. At the same time, in some academic conferences of the hospital, the manufacturers represented by the medical representatives can do some academic support.
Zhao Jianxin, chief physician of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, believes that medical representatives are the bridge connecting drugs and doctors, and the drugs produced by pharmaceutical factories can be introduced by medical representatives without the clinicians understanding, and in addition, they can cooperate with each other in scientific research.
However, the threshold for medical representatives to carry out academic transformation is also gradually increasing. The health industry searched for "medical representatives" as a keyword on boss direct employment and found that domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies are still vigorously recruiting oncology drugs and products that are not affected by collection.
For example, the product mainly responsible for the medical representatives recruited by Simcere Pharmaceutical is the concentrated solution for injection of edarafen dextrool (Firstbive New), which belongs to the national class 1 new drug, and the only class 1 new drug listed in the central field in the past five years, exclusive new products, not affected by 4 + 7.
In terms of the requirements for medical representatives, the health community found that most pharmaceutical companies require a bachelor's degree or above, a pharmaceutical-related professional background, and more than 1 year of work experience.
The road to transformation of pharmaceutical representatives has begun, in fact, because the pharmaceutical companies behind it are also changing at the same time.
Pharmaceutical companies are transforming simultaneously
In recent years, affected by policies such as quantity procurement, the reform of China's pharmaceutical field has entered a deep-water area.
With the amount of collection and procurement tends to be the norm, pharmaceutical companies to accelerate innovation has become a key way out. China Galaxy Securities Research Report believes that in the country continues to promote the organization of centralized procurement of drugs and consumables, generic drugs and high-value medical consumables with volume collection tends to be normalized, the future is expected to continue to expand the variety and regional scope, in the context of deepening the reform of the health system, it is imperative to control fees and reduce prices. "From the perspective of the long-term development trend of the industry, the industry will accelerate the transformation to the direction of innovation, the innovation ability is outstanding, and the enterprises with a wide product line layout will stand out in the industry reshuffle."
Chen Mengjie, chief consultant of Yuekai Securities, said to the health industry that the internal sector of the pharmaceutical and biological industry is clearly differentiated, the profits of the generic drug industry are thinning, the profits of the innovative drug industry are rising, a number of pharmaceutical companies that lay out innovative drugs are gradually standing out, the industry is in the process of standardized and centralized development, and the competitive pattern is expected to improve in the future. In the face of the impact of collection, pharmaceutical companies should actively transform into innovation, enrich product pipelines through independent research and development and License in, etc.; at the same time, deeply lay out overseas markets, and compete in overseas blue ocean markets through self-built teams or Lincese out.
(In the text, Geng Le, Lin Sheng, and Li Mi are pseudonyms)
Sources | the health community
Written by | Pang Xiaolu
Cover | courtesy of Pexels
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