Cancer drugs can be made affordable with pooled procurement: Study
A total of 23 cancer hospitals under the umbrella of the National Cancer Grid came together to participate in pooled procurement to improve the negotiability of high-value oncology.
Hyderabad: A unique model of procuring life-saving anti-cancer drugs in bulk, which resulted in savings of up to Rs 1,320 crore, pioneered by National Cancer Grid, a network of cancer hospitals and research centres including a few from Hyderabad, could well be a success story that is worth emulating for government-run hospitals.
The National Cancer Grid, a network of nearly 250 cancer hospitals and research facilities in the country, which has eight cancer hospitals including State-run MNJ Cancer Hospital from Hyderabad as its members, piloted pooled procurement of 40 major cancer drugs.
A total of 23 cancer hospitals under the umbrella of the National Cancer Grid came together to participate in pooled procurement to improve the negotiability of high-value oncology and supportive care medicines.
A total of 40 drugs were included in the pilot. The pooled demand for the drugs from 23 centres was equivalent to 15.6 billion Indian rupees (197 million United States dollars (US$) based on maximum retail prices. The entire procurement process, which was presented in a research paper ‘A National Cancer Grid pooled procurement initiative, India’, published in the life sciences journal PubMed Central (Sept 2023), resulted in combined savings of a staggering Rs 1,320 crore.
“The process included technical and financial evaluation followed by contracts between individual centres and the selected vendors. Savings of 13.2 billion Indian Rupees (US$ 166.7 million) were made compared to the maximum retail prices. The savings ranged from 23 percent to 99 percent (median: 82 percent) and were more with generics than innovator and newly patented medicines. This study reveals the advantages of group negotiation in pooled procurement for high-value medicines, an approach that can be applied to other health systems,” the study said.
The researchers from the National Cancer Grid in the paper said the success of pooled procurement will be relevant at a larger scale for the procurement of oncology drugs. If drugs are procured through national health authority, then it will “enhance the bargaining power as well as have far-reaching impact on access and affordability across the entire national network,” the cancer researchers in the study said.
