IN response to the challenge to make medicine affordable, a doctors’ cooperative is re-organizing its own drug distribution firm to make drugs accessible in the grassroots and help bring down prices, a doctor-leader said recently.

Dr. Jose M. Tiongco said the Medical Mission Group Hospitals and Health Services Cooperative of the Philippines (MMG-HHSCP), with 2,000 doctors as members in over 50 chapters all over the country, is the majority holder of the Cebu-based Medicíne Trading Inc.

Tiongco, MMGHHSCP chief executive officer, said the Medicíne, with coverage nation-wide, is being restructured and its marketing scheme being brought down to the grassroots or chapter levels under a proposal initially approved by MMG-Medicíne investors.

In the first investors’ meeting held last February 20 in Cebu City, MMGHHSCP chapter heads approved their geographical clustering to form part of the Medicíne distribution strategy.  The proposal, presented during the meeting by Tiongco, also MMG-Medicíne interim chief executive officer, will be subject to ratification by the cooperative’s general assembly in a meeting March 4 in Tagbilaran City, Bohol.
(See minutes of the February 20 meeting.)

The MMG-Medicíne distribution changes will come in the heels of the doctor- and drug firm-bashing late last year over unaffordable drugs.  Manila newspapers came out with special reports on the corruption of doctors allegedly by multinational drug firms, a factor in the setting of drug prices.

President Estrada also last year challenged doctors to do their part in ensuring that health be made affordable and accessible to the people.

Tiongco told Misyun! that the Medicíne restructuring would allow the drug distribution firm to approximate the resources and reach of multinational drug companies.  (Misyun! is a national monthly newspaper published by the MMGHHSCP and a group of cooperative-minded journalists belonging to Final Edition Inc.)

Tiongco said the biggest resource of the MMG-Medicíne would be the network of people in areas all over the country.

He said that although the clustering would devolve drug distribution efforts, the other side of the arrangement would lie in the bulk-buying to be done by the MMG-Medicíne based on the doctors’ requirements.  Drug purchases in bulk would further allow doctors to sell the medicine at lower rates.

Under the clustering plan, doctors will take a more active role in the distribution and the setting of prices of drugs, Tiongco added.

On the benefits to the organization, Tiongco also said the new scheme would promote cooperative ideals and help build the doctors’ sense of ownership of Medicíne Trading Inc.  It will, in addition, be a venue for the sharing of resources within the MMGHHSCP, through which financially and technically capable chapters can help strengthen newer chapters.

“The plan is for these clusters to pool their resources together to cover even areas where MMG has no chapters,” he said.

Below are the proposed clusters:

Luzon
* North: From Batanes to Pangasinan
* North Central: From Tarlac to Bulacan
* Metro Manila
* South Central: Cavite to Quezon Province
* South: Bicol Peninsula

 Visayas
* West: Panay to Negros Occidental
* Central: Negros Oriental to Southern Leyte
* East: Leyte and Samar

 Mindanao
* North: Zamboanga Peninsula to Surigao del Norte
* South: Maguindanao to Surigao Sur
* West: Zamboanga City to Tawi-tawi and Bongao

Once established, Tiongco said the clusters will adopt the chapter financing scheme, a mechanism by which participating doctors get discounts on medicines after an agreement is made between them and Medicíne Trading Inc. for a specific volume of purchases within a length of time.

“This is such an ambitious project.  Will we succeed?  Not without a lot of problems,” he said.  “What’s important is we’ll make it work.  People say it’s difficult, but we will make it work. Watch us.”*
 

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