ArticleJournal of pharmaceutical policy and practice2026
Evaluating factors associated with pharmaceutical price variation, dispersion and higher-tier pricing in Malaysia's public segmented procurement system: exploring market competition.
Article in Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background: Effective procurement is crucial for securing affordable medicines, yet limited evidence exists on pricing influences in Malaysia's dynamic pharmaceutical market. This study analysed factors associated with purchased price variation, bidder price dispersion, and higher-tier drug prices within the Ministry of Health's (MOH) segmented procurement system, focusing on market competition dynamics. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on eight high-expenditure therapeutic subgroups (2017-2021) using data from 19 MOH facilities across five regions. Price variation was calculated as the ratio of observed to minimum brand price, and bidder dispersion as the ratio of highest to lowest quoted price. Higher-tier prices exceeded the median price for a given brand. The Kruskal-Wallis H test was applied to examine distributional differences in purchased drug prices and bidder-quoted prices across categorical variables, while logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with higher-tier pricing ( Results: Among 97 drugs from 4,702 purchase records involving 28 suppliers, East Malaysia showed significantly higher price variation, and all regions had greater odds of higher-tier pricing than the Central region ( Conclusion: Findings highlight that both market and non-price competition influence procurement efficiency and price stability.
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