Dive Brief:
- A new study published by JAMA Internal Medicine indicates Medicare beneficiaries receiving hospital treatment from female physicians have slightly lower rates of 30-day mortality and hospital readmissions.
- The Harvard researchers analyzed more than 1.5 million patient hospitalizations.
- Just under a third (32.1%) of the treating physicians were women. On average, they were younger than the male physicians in the study, treated fewer patients and were more likely to have had osteopathic training.
Dive Insight:
As insurers, health systems and researchers increasingly examine outcomes, it is expected new trends will emerge. One trend, according to the research, that may surprise some is that female physicians appear to have slightly better outcomes than their male counterparts.
The researchers did not examine reasons for the trend, but simply analyzed hospitalizations and readmissions, finding that Medicare patients had an 11.07% mortality rate when treated by women and an 11.49% mortality rate when treated by men. Thirty-day hospital readmission rates varied similarly, at 15.02% for female physicians, compared to 15.57% for male physicians.
The authors observed that previous studies have suggested female physicians are more likely to follow clinical guidelines and to provide preventive care. Gender has also been shown to affect patient satisfaction.
In a reimbursement system increasingly based on factors other than volume, such findings may have important implications as health systems and large medical practices adjust their pay structures to cope with government and insurer financial incentives, and to address the 8% pay gap that currently favors male physicians.
