YOU'RE LESS LIKELY TO DIE IN HOSPITAL IF YOU'RE TREATED BY A FEMALE PHYSICIAN

Women doctors treat differently, save lives

Male and female physicians practice medicine differently. For example, women doctors spend more time with their patients, communicate more, offer more encouragement, and are more likely to adhere to the latest clinical guidelines.

A major new national study shows that those or other differences save lives. The study found that hospitalized elderly patients treated by female rather than male internists were 4 percent less likely to die and 5 percent less likely to be re-hospitalized within 30 days of admission. This was true across a wide range of conditions. And the sicker the patient, the bigger the difference between patient outcomes for female vs. male physicians.

Female physicians practice medicine differently--and more effectively

Credit: Ilmicrofono Oggiono

"The difference in mortality rates surprised us," said Yusuke Tsugawa, a researcher at Harvard University's T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the study's lead author. "The gender of the physician appears to be particularly significant for the sickest patients."

A four or five percent difference in survival rates may not seem like a lot, but since 10,000,000 patients like those in this study are hospitalized in the US every year, the authors estimate that if male physicians performed as well as their female colleagues, 32,000 lives would be saved--more than the number of Americans who die in traffic accidents every year.

The study, published today in the prestigious JAMA Internal Medicine, tracked the outcomes of more than 1.5 million Medicare hospitalizations from 2011 through 2014. All of the patients were 65 years old or older, 40 percent were men, 60 percent women. These were seriously ill patients--within 30 days of being admitted to the hospital, more than 15 percent were re-hospitalized and more than 11 percent died. About one third of patients were treated by female internists or hospitalists, two thirds by male physicians. Although earlier research has identified a number of differences between how female and male physicians practice, this is the first national study to see if those differences impact patient outcomes.

Although this study shows conclusively that the physician's gender does affect the risk that hospitalized elderly patients will die or be re-hospitalized, it does not pin down just what produces those differences.

"There was ample evidence that male and female physicians practice medicine differently," says Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "Our findings suggest that those differences matter and are important to patient health. We need to understand why female physicians have lower mortality so that all patients can have the best possible outcomes."

In the meantime, an accompanying editorial in the same journal points out that the medical profession needs to take a hard look at the gap in both pay and career advancement between female physicians and their male colleagues.

You can listen to an interview with the authors at this URL.