Male doctors might get paid considerably more than their female doctors, but it is the females who do a better job of keeping their Medicare sufferers alive, in accordance to an exhaustive Harvard study released this week.
The study, which ran in JAMA Internal Medicine, discovered that Medicare sufferers treated by females had an 11.07% mortality rate within thirty days of visiting the hospital compared to men’s 11.49% mortality rate. That might not appear like a lot, but it translates to tens of thousands of lives saved per year.
“Elderly hospitalized sufferers treated by female internists have lesser mortality and readmissions in contrast with those cared for by male internists,” the research concluded.
The most intriguing part of the report is that no one can say what female doctors are doing distinctively to account for their better patient results.
Females consistently had better results even when researchers took into account the age, gender, wealth, and overall situation of the sufferers seeking treatment. The research controlled for the kinds of hospitals, intensive care units and other variables that could be skewing the numbers, but every time, female hospitalists had better mortality rates. Sufferers with irregular heart rhythm, kidney failure and Pneumonia all had better results with women, in accordance to the study.
The Medicare sufferers of female doctors were also less likely to be readmitted within thirty days. Furthermore, patients suffering ailments like congestive heart failure, sepsis gastrointestinal bleeding, and pulmonary disease were all less likely to be readmitted within a month if they were treated by a lady doctor.
The scientists studied more than 1.5 million cases including 58,322 hospitalists.
“These findings recommend that the differences in practice techniques between male and female physicians, as suggested in previous studies, might have significant clinical implications for patient outcomes,” the authors of the report concluded.
In accordance to the study’s authors Dr. Tsugawa Yusuke, Dr. B. Jena Anupam,and Dr. Jose F. Figueroa, females have proven in previous studies to be more likely to follow clinical instructions, give preventative care, “utilize more patient-centered communication,” and give psychological counseling.
Since male doctors outnumber females over 2 to 1 and because the minor statistical difference in outcomes translates to more than 30,000 lives saved per year, the next initiative should be figuring out why females are doing a better job than their counterparts in keeping Medicare sufferers alive, the report concluded. That way, the male doctors could learn from the females.
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