A Comparative Analysis of Medical Representatives’ Influence on Doctors’ Prescription Behaviour in Private and Public Healthcare Sectors
摘要
Do Government and Private doctors differ in Goa? This is a question sought after by many individuals. Inorder to check this question, a survey was conducted on 200 Private doctors and 200 Government doctors. Three techniques were used. The Thurstone Case V Scaling technique, Pearson’s coefficient of correlation and one sample T test. The variables used for ranking were knowledge possessed by the medical representative, timing of the visit, samples provided, gifts and sponsorships given, nature of the medical representative and time spent at the clinic. The results were as follows. The Thurstone Case V scaling technique proved that among Government doctors, the highest ranked factor was Knowledge of the medical representative, followed by Timing of the visit, Time spent at the clinic, Samples, Nature of the medical representative and Gifts given to them. Among Private doctors it was, Knowledge of the medical representative, samples given to them, gifts given to them, time spent at the clinic, Nature of the medical representative and timing of the visit. The Pearsons coefficient of correlation and T test proved that there was a high positive correlation between Government and Private doctors in terms of knowledge or information given to them by medical representatives, medium correlation in terms of samples provided to them and a low correlation in terms of gifts given to them.