People treated by female doctors tend to have better health outcomes, study finds
People treated by female physicians have lower rates of mortality and readmission than those treated by male physicians.
That’s according to research published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
In their study, researchers reported that there was a clinically significant difference in outcomes for people depending on the gender of their treating physician.
“What our findings indicate is that female and male physicians practice medicine differently, and these differences have a meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes,” Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, a senior author of the study and an associate professor-in-residence of medicine in the division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, said in a press statement.
“Further research on the underlying mechanisms linking physician gender with patient outcomes, and why the benefit of receiving the treatment from female physicians is larger for female patients, has the potential to improve patient outcomes across the board,” he added.
Tsugawa and his colleagues examined data from Medicare claims made between 2016 to 2019. The data included more than 458,100 female patients and more than 318,800 male patients. Roughly 31% of both the male and female patient groups were treated by a female doctor.
The researchers reported that the mortality rate for female patients when they were treated by a female doctor was 8.15% compared with 8.38% when treated by a male physician. The researchers regard this as a clinically significant difference.
Among males, the mortality rate was 10.15% when treated by females compared with 10.23% for males.
Female and male doctors practice medicine differently
The researchers say there could be a number of potential reasons for the difference in outcomes between female and male physicians.
“We know that there are differences in care delivery patterns by male versus female physicians across fields of medicine. Female physicians spend more time with patients and spend more time engaging in shared medical decision making and partnership discussions than male counterparts,” Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor and medical director at the University of California San Francisco, told Medical News Today.
“Evidence from the outpatient setting demonstrates that female physicians spend more time on the electronic health record than male counterparts and deliver higher quality care,” Rotenstein noted. “In the surgical realm, female physicians spend longer on a surgical procedure and have lower rates of postoperative readmissions. We need to be asking ourselves how to provide the training and incentives so that all doctors can emulate the care provided by female physicians.”
In 2022, the most recent data available, females accounted for 37% of physicians practicing in the United States.
The specialities with the highest percentage of female physicians were pediatrics (65%) and hospice and palliative medicine (62%)
Sports medicine and orthopedic surgery had the lowest percentage of female physicians (7% and 6%, respectively).