Author: Shang Feng.
2023 Annual Stocktake
Recently, there was a good news in the pharmacy circle, when the State Food and Drug Administration replied to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, it was made clear that Chinese herbal medicines with the same origin of medicine and food can be sold on the shelves, and no prescription is required for sales. Coupled with the "hot sales" of sour plum soup some time ago, one stone stirred up a thousand waves, and many pharmacy people who were worried about the growth of performance immediately lit up, feeling that the pharmacy had a new growth point, and the spring of Chinese medicinal materials with the same origin of medicine and food was coming!
If you follow the meaning of the title, it seems to be like this!Let's think about it, Chinese herbal medicines with the same origin as medicine and food, that is, they can be used as both Chinese medicinal materials and food, many of which have a very long history of eating and a very large number of people who eat them. In the past, it was sold as medicinal materials in pharmacies, and prescription drugs that required a prescription before they could be dispensed and managed, had to be placed at a closed counter when they were sold. Naturally, its sales volume is greatly limited.
Now, you can not only open the shelves for easy "wandering" customers to choose, but also sell without a prescription!Only, is this really the case?Carefully reading the full text of the reply, it is not difficult for us to find that in fact, this is just the conjecture of the title party, and the truth is: the management measures for medicinal and edible homologous Chinese medicinal materials have not changed.
Medicine and food are homologous, as the name suggests, that is, they can be used as both medicine and food. However, this is a concept, for the specific materialized medicine and food homologous Chinese medicinal materials, they have only one attribute, either medicine or food.
Choosing their attributes is to determine their packaging, and the quality standards that need to be determined on the packaging, just like eels, although eels are hermaphrodites, but for eels for a specific period of time, they are either female eels or male eels and not both male and female.
In other words, for the medicinal and edible homologous Chinese medicinal materials that eventually become commodities, they are either Chinese medicinal materials or food. You can't say that it is medicine when you pay for it, and use the medical insurance pooled funds to pay for it, but in the display and sales link, you can say that it is food, and display and sell it casually.
Carefully read the reply of the State Food and Drug Administration, in fact, it is also the consistent policy on medicine and food homologous commodities in recent years, that is: when it is finally presented to consumers in the form of Chinese herbal medicines, it needs to be tested in accordance with the quality standards of Chinese herbal medicines, and packaged and marked in accordance with the requirements of Chinese herbal medicines, displayed in closed prescription counters, and sold with prescriptions, and can also be paid with medical insurance**.
When it is finally presented to consumers in the form of food, it will be tested and packaged in accordance with the quality standards and packaging requirements of the food, and it can also be sold on the shelf, and there is no need for a doctor's prescription when selling, let alone using medical insurance** to pay.
However, in our pharmacies, the largest proportion is the medical insurance pharmacy, according to the current medical insurance outpatient co-ordination pharmacy, the vast majority of medical insurance pharmacies will become medical insurance outpatient co-ordination pharmacies. Judging from the management measures of medical insurance outpatient co-ordination pharmacies in various places, food cannot be displayed in these pharmacies.
Therefore, everyone will still think that the sales of medicinal and edible homologous Chinese medicinal materials in pharmacies are really comingIn fact, when the Chinese herbal medicines of the same origin as medicine and food appear in front of consumers in the face of food, their total sales are actually very huge, but why can't pharmacies always catch it?On the contrary, supermarkets and e-commerce occupy a larger market share, isn't it worth reflecting on pharmacies?