December 19, 2016
Next time you are in need of medical attention, you should hope that you are being treated by a woman, according to the findings of a recent study.
On Monday, JAMA Internal Medicine published a study that suggests patients who are treated by female doctors are less likely to die and have lower readmission rates compared to those who are treated by men.
Harvard researchers examined more than 1.5 million patients to determine whether the gender of the doctor affected health outcomes. Previous studies have found that there are differences in the way male and female doctors treat patients. For example, women are more likely than men to practice guidelines based on scientific evidence.
Only Medicare patients 65 years or older who were hospitalized and treated by general internists between 2011 and 2014 were used in the study. This method filtered out patients who were able to choose their doctors.
The results revealed that being treated by a female doctor reduced the risk of death by 4 percent and decreased the rate of readmission by 5 percent.
The improved outcomes were recorded across a variety of medical conditions, including pneumonia, sepsis and gastrointestinal bleeding. Furthermore, the disparity increased depending on the severity of the illness.
The researchers estimated that approximately 32,000 more patients would survive hospitalizations annually if male doctors could perform as well as female doctors.
Although the study could not identify a specific reason why patients enjoyed better health outcomes with female doctors, the research team stressed that the findings are significant enough to warrant further study into the difference between the care provided by male and female doctors.
