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Journal of Medical Sciences

Year: 2006 | Volume: 6 | Issue: 4 | Page No.: 577-584
DOI: 10.3923/jms.2006.577.584
Measuring the Productivity of Physicians and Evaluating the Factors that Influence such Productivity in Taiwan
Chun- Chu Liu

Abstract: Ever since the 1970s, the behavior of health care providers has been a research topic of serious concern to medical and economic scholars in the advanced countries. Because of the increased supply and demand for medical care, related expenditure has risen so rapidly that it has exceeded the economic growth rate and has increased to such an extent that it has affected the opportunities for the balanced development of other sectors. For this reason, in the medical market, how to make good use of limited medical resources, in order to seek the largest health standard for all of the country’s citizens, is currently one of the most important research directions in medical economics. In terms of the supply of medical care in the market, hospitals are in the most important position and also account for the most expenditure, that is, hospitals use the most medical resources in the medical market. According to Bureau of National Health Insurance statistics, hospitals have since 1995 when national health insurance began to be implemented on average accounted for 65% of total reported medical expenses. If such expenses are categorized according to the level of evaluation, medical expenses reported by medical centers and regional hospitals account for 70% of total reported expenditure in the hospital sector and physicians mostly control some 80% of this medical expenditure. For this reason, physicians have a major influence on medical expenditure in terms of how efficiently medical resources are used. Moreover, when seeking to measure the concept of relative efficiency in regard to medical care, most studies focus on an evaluation of the relative efficiency of hospitals. It is for this reason that this study intends to focus on the physicians and to examine the input-output relationships between the medical resources used by these physicians and the quantity of medical services provided by them, in order to analyze the productivity and efficiency of physicians. In addition, by applying the Malmquist productivity index, this study empirically evaluates how the quantities of each physician′s medical inputs and service outputs affect productivity and efficiency and uses panel data to analyze the sources of each physician’s productivity and efficiency changes over the years.

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How to cite this article
Chun- Chu Liu , 2006. Measuring the Productivity of Physicians and Evaluating the Factors that Influence such Productivity in Taiwan. Journal of Medical Sciences, 6: 577-584.

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