A new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health found that Medicare patients who were treated by women physicians in hospitals were less likely to die and less likely to be readmitted to the hospital than Medicare patients who were treated by male doctors.
Researchers looked at a random sample of Medicare patients who were treated in hospitals between January 2011 and December 2014. They found that no matter the reasons patients were hospitalized, they were less likely to die or be readmitted to the hospital in the following 30 days if they were treated by a woman. For some afflictions such as sepsis, pneumonia, and acute kidney failure the differences were even more pronounced.
The authors cite other studies that show that women were more likely to use best practices when treating patients and more likely to communicate better with patients. They noted that there are 10 million hospitalizations of Medicare patients each year. The authors conclude that “approximately 32,000 fewer patients would die if male physicians could achieve the same outcomes as female physicians every year.”
The study, “Comparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates for Medicare Patients Treated by Male vs Female Physicians,” was published on the website of JAMA Internal Medicine. It may be accessed here.