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[In 2024, affected by the decrease in personal account income, it is expected that the annual amount of medical insurance expenditures for retail pharmacies’ personal accounts will further decline by 6%.]

Xiao Xiaojun is the owner of a drugstore in Huizhou, Guangdong. Within two kilometers of his drugstore, there are at least five other drugstores open for business. This phenomenon can be seen everywhere on the streets.

In recent years, the number of pharmacies has increased. As of the second quarter of this year, there are 701,000 pharmacies, but business is getting harder and harder. "The competition in the industry is too fierce," Xiao Xiaojun sighed.

At the 2024 SIP Conference held recently, Liao Honghui, general manager of Zhongkang Technology's commercial big data division, revealed that the growth in the number of pharmacies across the country has begun to slow down, and the number of store closures has increased significantly. Data from the Zhongkang Pharmacy Pass system shows that the number of closed pharmacies across the country has increased from 6,778 in the first quarter of 2024 to 8,792 in the second quarter.

Behind the increase in store closures

The income from individual medical insurance accounts has always been a very important part of the total operating income of pharmacies. After the reform of individual medical insurance accounts in 2021, the proportion of unit contributions and pooling funds transferred to individual accounts decreased, which directly led to the first negative growth in individual medical insurance account income in 2023.

According to the 2023 Medical Insurance Statistical Bulletin of the National Healthcare Security Administration, in 2023, the income from personal medical insurance accounts will drop from 763.3 billion yuan in 2022 to 635.1 billion yuan in 2023.