A Study on Socio- Economic Profile of Private Medical Practitioners and Its Impact on Quality Health Services

In this paper our study mainly focuses on socio-economic profile of private medical practitioners and its impact on private health services of Vellore district in Tamilnadu. The study deals the allopathic medical practice only. The study is both descriptive and analytical in nature. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used in this study. Multistage random sampling method was adopted to collect data. The primary data was collected from about 335 private medical practitioners from Indian Medical Association (IMA), Vellore branch. Statistical tools such as percentage analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, discriminant analysis and chi-square test were used in the present study. It is found from the cluster analysis that 15.8 per cent of private medical practitioners’ socio-economic profiles have medium impact and 53.4 per cent of practitioners’ socio-economic profiles have high impact. The remaining 30.8 per cent of practitioners’ socio-economic profiles have low impact on private health services. The private medical practitioners should take necessary steps to modify their practice method to group practice from individual practice and increase bed facility and attend to take care of more number of patients per day. The incurring cost should be balanced in a way to cover all the necessary aspects by making adequate reinvestment and known the procedure from time to time for obtaining bank loan and subsidy in right time and realign their goals.