Abstract
Objectives : This study aimed to analyze price variance by year, region and company of raw herbal medicines to draw payment system for herbal medicine insurances in the National Health Insurance. Methods : To analyse price variance, we used 2015-2017 data of 'Quality test results of imported herbal medicines' provided by Korea Pharmaceutical Traders Association and 'Price data of 56 raw herbal medicines' that was surveyed by the Association of Korean Medicine. We analysed gap of highest price and lowest price those were compared with average price and coefficient of variation(CV) of prices by year, region and company of raw herbal medicines. Results : In analysing 3 years data, the highest price was 23.2% higher, and the lowest price was 19.1% lower than the average price. As of 2018, the average price of domestic produced herbal medicines was 1,8 times higher than that of imported herbal medicines. By companies, the highest price was 117.5% higher, and the lowest price was 57.3% lower than the average price. Conclusions : The price of herbal medicines varied by production year, region and company. This results suggest that comprehensive payment model needs to be considered in modeling the health insurance coverage for herbal medicine decoctions.
