The problem of doctor-patient relations is not new.
A report by the Home Affairs Committee in December last year identified a growing problem of "doctor shopping", whereby prescription drug addicts sign up to multiple GPs to get multiple prescriptions.
Consequently, the estimated probabilities yield an upper level probability that is important to bear in mind when interpreting results and considering policies in addressing the problem of doctor scarcity in rural areas.
Since the problem of doctor shortage in primary care in Japan exists even without income disadvantage or financial pressure among medical graduates, simply financing medical education to address students' debt, or providing financial incentives might not be sufficient to expand the primary care workforce.
Without cheaper drugs, public health advocates say, the problems of doctors like Christopher Ouma, who works in a Nairobi public hospital where nearly 70percentt of patients have AIDS, will never be solved.
The impact of this problem on doctors' prescribing behaviour might be even greater in developing countries and post-Soviet Russia where access to industry-free medicine information is limited.
Instead of fixing the problem of rogue doctors over-prescribing, the government pressured doctors doing valuable work.
"The sample [of patients] we have analysed come from more than 200 GP practices, so this suggests that it is not a problem of specific doctors, it suggests that it is a system-wide problem," said Cristina Renzi, lead researcher of the study from University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
A European initiative is also battling the problem of keeping doctors up-to-date and providing personalised treatment.
Though most of the recent, high-profile scandals have been in hospitals, Mr Thornton says that the problem of shoddy doctoring among GPs is far worse, in fact "a disgrace".
