Patients treated by female physicians experience lower mortality and readmission rates
A new study has found that patients treated by female physicians have lower rates of mortality and hospital readmissions compared to those treated by male physicians, with female patients benefitting more than their male counterparts.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine, examined Medicare claims data from 2016 to 2019 for approximately 458,100 female and 319,800 male patients. Of those, 31% were treated by female doctors.
The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality from the date of hospital admission and 30-day readmission from the date of discharge.
The researchers found that the mortality rate for female patients was 8.15% when treated by female physicians vs. 8.38% when the physician was male – a clinically significant difference. While the difference for male patients was smaller, female physicians still had the edge with a 10.15% mortality rate compared with male doctors’ 10.23% rate.
The researchers found the same pattern for hospital readmission rates.
The researchers suggest that these findings indicate that female and male physicians practice medicine differently and that these differences have a meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes. Further research is needed to investigate the underlying mechanisms linking physician gender with patient outcomes and why the benefit of receiving treatment from female physicians is larger for female patients.
“A better understanding of this topic could lead to the development of interventions that effectively improve patient care,” said Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, 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 UCLA and the study’s senior author.
