On 6th of June there was a session in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation (CCI) with a Healthcare Entrepreneurship Committee of CCI, Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) Healthcare Commission, Pharmaceutical and Medical RSPP Commission and Coordination Council by the Ministry of Health. Actual questions regarding procurements of medicines and medical devices for the government and municipal needs have been discussed during the session.
The analysis of adherence of the Federal Laws №44 and №223 and their influence on the availability, quality and general improvement of Healthcare in Russia shows that hospitals Healthcare organizations usually do not rationally spend the budget funds.
In 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 cases of violation of the medical procurement tender rules by customers have become more frequent. Inclusion of various products in one lot, superfluous specification of lots, preparation of terms of references and conditions of performance of a contract for a specific supplier become a normal practice. All these leads to a limit many companies to take part in procurements and as a result these leads to ineffective budget spendings and decrease in quality of Healthcare.
Viktor Dmitriev, a CEO of the Association of Russian Pharmaceutical Manufactures (ARPM), started his speech with a citation of Tatiana Golikova, a head of Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation from the interview to TASS at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum-2017: “During the last six years the government has financed various development institutes with 5 trillion Rubles of taxpayers, having said that, the efficiency of spending this money is doubtful… Procurements by government corporations are not controlled by the government and according to the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation only 5% of public procurements used tenders”, she mentioned that numbers clearly show the situation in this sphere. Viktor Dmitriev was in solidarity with Maxim Ovchinnikov, a Deputy of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, who said that procurements from the single supplier and estimate changes is a classical scheme of budget theft.
Almost all speakers noticed the negative attitude to the single supplier for the public procurements. Elena Maximkina, a director of the Department of medical supply and circulation of medical devices, mentioned that a single supplier can be only in exceptional cases.
In addition, Viktor Dmitriev noticed that artificial, perfect conditions, based on rule “Friend or Foe”, leads to using this rule at the regional level with an unfair competition among “Friends”. “The situation with insulin procurement is a great example of that”, the speaker noticed. “Analyzing the efficiency of budget spending it is necessary to look over the “point of procurement”: to make sure that the purchased goods are in use or they are written-off because of their inefficiency or multiple serious adverse effects, are patients being forced to buy analogues, recommended by physicians using their money, do hospitals spend additional extra budgetary money to buy effective medicines”.
The Head of ARPM supported the idea of Alexander Ruchkin, a President of the Association “Zdravmedtech”, to establish the register of unscrupulous customers. Also, he offered to use the mandatory standards GRP (Good Regulatory Practice) for regulators.