Emily Chan
Over the last several decades, research has shown that people, particularly women, have better health outcomes when treated by a female doctor.
In a recent study, researchers analyzed data collected from 776,000 male and female patients who were aged 65 and older. They were all treated between 2016 and 2019.
The researchers discovered that patients who saw female physicians were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital. The female patients also saw more benefits than the male ones.
A research team led by Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, an associate professor with the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, examined data from Medicare claims pertaining to around 458,100 female patients and nearly 319,800 male patients—142,500 of the females and 97,500 of the males were treated by female doctors.
Then, the team evaluated patient mortality and readmission rates to the hospital 30 days after being admitted. The findings revealed that female patients treated by female doctors had a mortality rate of 8.15 percent. In comparison, the mortality rate was 8.38 percent when treated by a male doctor.
For male patients, seeing female physicians resulted in a 10.5 percent mortality rate, and male physicians had a 10.23 percent rate.
The same pattern was found for hospital readmission rates. Patient health outcomes are not supposed to differ between male and female doctors, but the study clearly shows that a difference does exist. This indicates that male and female physicians practice medicine differently.
According to the researchers, there are a number of factors that could be contributing to these contrasts.
For one, male doctors may minimize the severity of their female patients’ symptoms. In medical literature, that phenomenon is referred to as the “gender pain gap.”
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