Impact of the National Centralized Drug Procurement Policy (4 + 7 policy) on the drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments in a large tertiary level-A hospital in China: A single centre, interrupted time series.

What Is Known And Objective: Like many countries in the world, China is also facing growing drug expenditures year by year. In particular, the rising cost of prescription drugs has been one of the critical factors leading to the serious burden on health insurance programs. The high cost of prescription drugs not only threatens the health budget but also limits the nation's investment in other public sectors. China implemented the National Centralized Drug Procurement (NCDP) policy, also known as the "4 + 7" policy, in tertiary hospitals in various provinces and cities across the country on 18 December 2019, aiming to lessen personal and national health insurance burdens by reducing drug procurement prices. The aim of this study is to explore the impact of the implementation of the NCDP policy on the drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments and on national health insurance expenditures.

Methods: This study adopts interrupted time series (ITS) to evaluate the impact of China's implementation of the NCDP policy on the drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments in a tertiary hospital. The NCDP policy was officially implemented on 18 December 2019. A segmented regression model is utilized to analyse the average monthly drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments from January 2018 to June 2021, including the average monthly per-visit drug expenditures of all patients and the average monthly per-visit drug expenditures of patients who paid for drugs with health insurance and those who did not use health insurance.

Results: After the implementation of the NCDP policy, the overall average monthly per-visit drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments were immediately reduced by 233.954 CNY (p < 0.01). Compared with the continued downward trend for drug expenditures before the implementation of the NCDP policy, the long-term trend after policy implementation was not obvious (p = 0.051973>0.05). Similarly, the average monthly per-visit drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments who use health insurance to procure drugs also immediately decreased by 505.287 CNY (p < 0.01), but the long-term trends before (p = 0.469>0.05) and after policy implementation (p = 0.51>0.05) did not exhibit obvious change. For the average monthly per-visit drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments who did not use health insurance, the implementation of the NCDP policy did not produce an immediate reduction in drug expenditures (p = 0.3603>0.05). Although the average monthly per-visit drug expenditures decreased by 9.078 CNY (p < 0.01) before policy implementation, this trend ended after the policy was implemented (p = 0.0735>0.05), and no other changes were triggered.

What Is New And Conclusion: This study reviews the data for a period of time before and after the implementation of the NCDP policy. The policy is shown to significantly decrease the average monthly per-visit drug expenditures of patients treated in outpatient and emergency departments.