China to introduce an online healthcare corruption ‘blacklist’
The authorities in the mainland will in 2014 publish an online list of medical suppliers and practitioners found guilty of graft
China will in 2014 introduce a blacklist of drug makers and medical device manufacturers found to have paid bribes as it extends a crackdown on graft in the healthcare sector.
Healthcare departments will compile lists of offending manufacturers, agents and individuals, which will be published online, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said on Friday. The list will come into effect from the beginning of March.
Firms appearing on the list once will be banned for two years from selling within the region where they were implicated. Those appearing on the list twice in five years will be banned nationally, also for two years.
Corruption in the healthcare sector has been in the spotlight this year with regulators investigating international and domestic drugs firms and milk powder companies for suspected graft.
The most high-profile investigation so far involved British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), significantly denting the firm’s China sales and spooking doctors more widely to reduce interaction with the sales teams of medial suppliers.
GSK has said some of its senior Chinese executives appear to have broken the law. It has also said it has zero tolerance for bribery, calling the allegations in China “shameful”.