Media reports indicate that medical devices, such as coronary stents, require extensive networking and negotiation before entering hospitals. A coronary stent that costs only one or two thousand yuan to produce can end up costing twenty or thirty thousand yuan after going through multiple layers of bureaucracy and price increases.
At first glance, the high cost of medical devices stems from numerous intermediaries and excessively high intermediary costs. From manufacturers and sales representatives to hospital directors and department heads, everyone is exploiting patients for personal gain. The patients are innocent victims, lying on the operating table while their life-saving money is used to feed parasites.
Is there really such a conspiracy? In fact , anyone with basic economic knowledge knows that these claims are unreliable.
In any commodity market, intermediaries help reduce costs. Vegetable vendors transport vegetables from the fields to the market, making it easier, not harder, for consumers to buy them. Similarly, the production and distribution of mobile phones through multiple layers of dealers lowers the cost for consumers to obtain the devices. This principle also applies to the medical device industry.
Prices are determined by both supply and demand. The supply of medical devices is highly market-driven, with both domestic and imported products, leading to fierce competition. Sales representatives practically wear down the threshold of the hospital director's office in their efforts to sell a single batch of devices. Their sales tactics often employ a "free trial, pay later" model, a typical buyer's market sales strategy.
China's healthcare system is not fully open, and key resources (especially for major surgeries) are concentrated in public hospitals. Public hospitals are subject to government pricing guidance, which covers both registration fees and surgical fees. Total costs are monitored, and detailed regulations must be reported. For example, there are limits on the total cost of a single surgery, and hospitals must report detailed expense breakdowns and accept government guidance on revenue distribution.
The cost of a surgical procedure typically consists of four parts: medication, consumables and equipment, medical staff labor costs, and hospital management fees. Among these, the labor costs for medical staff are relatively low, usually accounting for only 10%. A single coronary stent surgery often requires nearly ten medical staff working for a day, costing fifty to sixty thousand yuan. The labor costs allocated to the doctor are only five to six thousand yuan. Dividing this down to the individual doctor, it's only one or two thousand yuan, or even a few hundred yuan, which is actually not high.
Doctors who perform surgeries in hospitals typically undergo extensive medical training, and hospitals must pay them high salaries to ensure a high level of medical expertise. This cost allocation clearly underestimates the value of medical staff's labor. Hospital directors aren't fools; they naturally want to provide medical staff with reasonable compensation. This money is distributed as surgical subsidies, overtime pay, quarterly bonuses, and paper awards, and can only be drawn from other areas.
Of all the hospital's charges, only medication and medical equipment are the most flexible and loosely regulated. What medication to use and what dosage to take are entirely up to the doctor. The prices of medical equipment used in surgery range from tens of thousands to millions of yuan, making it difficult for officials to regulate.
Disclaimer: This article is a reprint. If it involves copyright issues, please contact us promptly for deletion (QQ: 2737591964). We apologize for any inconvenience.
