Study finds patients treated by female doctors have lower mortality rates

Me, not so much. That’s according to a new research. And, it does (to a certain extent). Not exactly. Even though female doctors have better outcomes, Mic notes that they still get paid less than male doctors. “And so certainly this study goes a long way to dispelling that rationalization”. And now it seems that they may actually deliver better health care for patients in certain situations.

Additionally, patients of female doctors had a 15.02 percent readmission rate, compared to 15.57 percent for male doctors.

A recent study shows that your doctor’s gender may influence your survival.

“It would be a mistake to change anything in public policy on the basis of these results, or to advise patients to change their behavior based on this information alone”, he said.

They looked at 30-day mortality, readmission rates, then they adjusted to effectively compare female and male physicians with the same hospital.

Researchers chose a 20% random sample of Medicare beneficiaries ≥65 years of age to analyze. The ailments these patients suffered from included heart failure, pneumonia, urinary infections, lung disease and intestinal bleeding. Regardless, it was a uniform and systematic approach that reflects the provider likely to have been the majority influence of the stay and was deemed not to affect their findings once factoring in their statistical analyses.

What prompted them to explore the issue? . Apart from the fact that only about 43 per cent of Global Positioning System and one-third (34 per cent) of specialists in Australia are women, they say the study’s goal is to begin to understand different patterns of practice that are driving different health outcomes.

The researchers accounted for differences in the patient populations that female and male doctors treated, and differences in the hospitals where they worked, among other things.

“Some have suggested that home responsibilities might contribute to female physicians providing inferior care and thus justify these disparities”, Parks said by email.

Might some unmeasured factors have tipped the study’s scales?

For patients treated by a female doctor, that translated to a 4% lower relative risk of dying prematurely and a 5% lower relative risk of being readmitted to a hospital within 30 days, the researchers found. Women’s salaries, too, are 8 percent lower. We shouldn’t be so quick to disregard that very valid fact.

But, he said, his team dug for other explanations and did not find any. Explaining the reasons could improve clinical practice for everyone. Yes, more investigation is warranted.

Previous research cited in the paper has found that female doctors are more likely to practice “evidence-based” medicine, adhere to clinical guidelines and provide more patient-centered care. “We need to understand why female physicians have lower mortality so that all patients can have the best possible outcomes, irrespective of the gender of their physician”.