Perceptions of general practitioners towards pharmaceutical price war and assessment medicines price variation among general practitioners’ clinics in the state of Penang, Malaysia:

BackgroundMalaysian government has currently no drug pricing regulation. Therefore, drug prices are determined by the market force. In Malaysia, dispensing doctors have dual roles in prescribing and dispensing medicines to patients. General practitioners in private clinics are legally permitted to dispense prescription drugs to their patients. Consequently, general practitioners and community pharmacists play a similar functional role in dispensing medicines to patients because system of dispensing separation is still lacking. This study aims to evaluate the perceptions of general practitioners toward issues of pharmaceutical price war, different bonus schemes provided by pharmaceutical companies, and to assess the selling prices of some prescription drugs.MethodThis study is a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study. Mail survey methodology was adopted in this study to elicit the information of perceptions of general practitioner toward pharmaceutical price war and the selling prices of the top 5 most ...