Women and men die less when treated by female physicians study finds

Patients across the board have lower mortality rates and hospital readmissions when they are treated by female physicians according to a new study. However, women appear to be the biggest winners when treated by other women. 

In a study that examined eight hundred thousand male and female patients hospitalized between 2016 and 2019, researchers found that men and women have better outcomes when treated by females instead of male doctors. 

Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, all participants were aged 65 or older and covered by Medicare. However, those two facts didn’t explain the discrepancy in health outcomes for women when treated by different sexes. 

The study revealed that 8.15% of women who were treated by female physicians died within 30 days whereas 8.38% of women treated by male physicians died within 30 days. 

The difference in percentages might seem small but NBC News noted the researchers said the difference amounted to a gap of about 5,000 women’s lives each year. There was a similar discovery with hospital readmission rates as well. 

Mortality rates among male patients between females and males had a slightly smaller gap but female physicians still came out ahead with a 10.15% mortality rate versus a 10.23% mortality rate for male physicians. 

In practice, patient outcomes should not differ regardless of whether or not a male or female is treating someone according to the new study’s senior author and associate professor-in-residence at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. 

“What our findings indicate is that female and male physicians practice medicine differently, and these differences have a meaningful impact on patients' health outcomes,” Dr. Tsugawa explained in a press release on the new research. 

Of the roughly 458,000 women who were included in the study, about 146,000 were treated by female physicians while 97,500 of the 319,800 males included in the study were treated by female physicians.

Researchers suggested that there may be several driving factors behind why female physicians tend to have better outcomes in death rates and hospital readmissions than their male counterparts, including one very worrying problem. 

Male doctors may underestimate the severity of the issues that their female patients are suffering from according to the UCLA press release on the research, which pointed out that prior research has shown male doctors underestimate a wide variety of problems. 

“Our pain and our symptoms are often dismissed,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health according to NBC News. “It may be that women physicians are more aware of that and are more empathetic.”

On the other hand, the researchers noted that female physicians may be a lot better at communicating with their female patients, which makes it far more likely that women will give female physicians more information that can lead to better diagnoses and treatments. 

“There’s lots of variation between women and men physicians,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health explained to NBC News. Dr. Jha explained that women “tend to be better at communication, listening to patients, and speaking openly.”

“Patients report that communication is better. You put these things together, and you can understand why there are small but important differences,” Jha continued. However, the researchers also noted one more crucial difference for female patients. 

Women may just be more comfortable undergoing more sensitive examinations when they are being treated by a female physician rather than a male physician. This might lead to more detailed conversations with females rather than males. 

Dr. Tsugawa said that more research is needed into on topic in order to understand the underlying mechanisms behind the varying health outcomes, and added the world would only benefit from having more female physicians in hospitals. 

“A better understanding of this topic could lead to the development of interventions that effectively improve patient care,” Tsugawa said. It is important to note that female physicians provide high-quality care, and therefore, having more female physicians benefits patients from a societal point-of-view.”