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Research Article: Drug-cost trajectories after national volume-based procurement in Chinese public hospitals: a 31-province interrupted time-series analysis

Date Published: 2026-09-30

Abstract:
China's national volume-based procurement (NVBP) policy reduced prices for selected medicines, but national aggregate drug-cost trends are exposed to concurrent reforms and nonlinear prepolicy trajectories. We assessed public-hospital drug-cost trajectories around 2019 and explored hospital revenue structure. This uncontrolled ecological interrupted time-series study used a balanced panel of 31 province-level units from 2011 through 2024 (434 province-years). Province fixed-effects segmented regressions estimated immediate level and annual trend changes in per-encounter drug costs and drug-cost shares. Sensitivity analyses examined nonlinear and piecewise pretrends, non-drug costs as a control series, calendar-year fixed effects in drug-versus-non-drug comparative models, consumer-price-index deflation, multiple testing, and influential years. Revenue structure was described in 35 observations from 4 data-available provinces, with wild cluster bootstrap inference reported only as exploratory. No primary outcome showed a clear immediate 2019 level change (all P >?.05). Under the prespecified single-linear-pretrend model, annual trends changed by ?1.67 Chinese yuan (CNY) per outpatient visit [95% confidence interval (CI), ?2.70 to ?0.63] and ?164.53 CNY per inpatient discharge (95% CI, ?199.80 to ?129.26). In the linear model, the model-implied 2024 differences were ?5.31 CNY per outpatient visit (95% CI, ?11.70 to 1.07; P =?.100) and ?753.18 CNY per inpatient discharge (95% CI, ?924.76 to ?581.60; P <?.001). However, results were highly sensitive to pretrend form: with a 2016-2018 piecewise pretrend, corresponding changes were 1.64 CNY (95% CI, 0.27 to 3.02) and 17.11 CNY (95% CI, ?33.46 to 67.68). Inpatient non-drug cost also changed substantially (?409.50 CNY/year; 95% CI, ?483.03 to ?335.97), and the inpatient drug-versus-non-drug differential trend change was not significant after calendar-year fixed effects ( P =?.488). Drug-cost shares remained below 2011 levels but declined more slowly after 2019 in all specifications. The 4-province revenue trend-change interval crossed zero with wild cluster bootstrap inference ( P =?.055). Conclusion: The single-linear ITS suggested post-2019 changes in aggregate drug-cost trajectories, but nonlinear pretrends and synchronous non-drug changes materially weakened their specificity to NVBP. These annual ecological data support temporal description, not attribution of the observed breakpoint to NVBP alone.

Introduction:
China's national volume-based procurement (NVBP) policy reduced prices for selected medicines, but national aggregate drug-cost trends are exposed to concurrent reforms and nonlinear prepolicy trajectories. We assessed public-hospital drug-cost trajectories around 2019 and explored hospital revenue structure.

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