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Want To Save 32,000 Lives Per Year? Get Male Doctors To Practice Like Women Docs
invite response
2016 Dec 20, 5:26am 7,970 views 29 comments
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The business model in U.S. Healthcare is to maim the patient and rape them into bankruptcy. Women just suck at doing their job, hence the poor results.
If you want to save lives, first thing you have to do is educate the populace that the Federal Government guidelines for nutrition cause harm, and replace with good info. Second, ban advertising for drugs on the television, so people aren't programmed to be hypochondriacs fiending for more harmful and wholly ineffective, drugs.
First, do no harm, is now First, get dat money
Dan8267
2016 Dec 20, 7:39am
It turns out the patients treated by women had a 4 percent lower risk of dying prematurely and a 5 percent lower risk of being readmitted to a hospital within 30 days compared with the patients cared for by male doctors. In absolute terms, that means the mortality risk went from 11.5 percent among the patients of male doctors to about 11.1 percent among the patients of female doctors.
I'd have no problem preferring female doctors if it is true that my chances of dying were even slightly less with them. However, I have to be skeptical about all gender studies saying "women are better than men at X" because if there were any evidence or studies showing the opposite, that "men are better than women at X", such evidence and studies would be suppressed like child porn. As such, the mere lack of evidence that women are better than men at X implies a greater than 50% probability of the opposite. It's like a recurring game in which there are two doors, one has a million dollars for you behind it and the other one a lion. Most of the time when you pick the door with the million dollars, before entering it, the game show host says "game cancelled". If the game show host doesn't say "game cancelled", it's probably a lion.
And that's the problem with political correctness when it comes to science. It makes people doubt the truth even when the science is right.
RWSGFY
2016 Dec 20, 7:48am
the study can’t offer a clear explanation for this apparent female edge
Yeah, lets get them practice like women, except we have no fucking idea what exactly does that mean.
If FAILURES could pay cash,they would have the best medical care
they do at places like minute clinic because they don't want to wait 6 weeks for appt at primary care doc office.
How much medical care can one actually receive at a minute clinic/medexpress?
My closest one used to be a blockbuster, I'd wager there was more value add in renting movies than getting soaked for very minimal healthcare.
Maybe a good place to go for a quick permission slip if you need antibiotics or drugs, in this free market land of the free. Aside from that not sure what they even claim to provide , aside from an easy way to waste your time and money
APOCALYPSEFUCK_is_ADORABLE says
They're trying to find the story.
The guys are trying to check a box that gets them paid fastest with the lowest risk of being sued.
So these female doctors in question are not required to use an EHR? Or do they actively make it a point not to bring electronic devices into the room while taking a history and physical on a patient?
How much medical care can one actually receive at a minute clinic/medexpress?
They do a fair amount. Not as comprehensive as the average primary doctor, particularly with regards to procedures but still, a fair amount
http://www.cvs.com/minuteclinic/insurance-and-billing/price-lists
I'd wager there was more value add in renting movies than getting soaked for very minimal healthcare
Pretty sure netflix and its predecessors killed the renting movies model; healthcare is something people have to step out of their houses to receive, in most cases. Moreover, healthcare delivery isn't subject to the same 'free market' forces that the movie rental business is subject to.
How much medical care can one actually receive at a minute clinic/medexpress
Them and other urgent care facilities, do explicitly state, that the care given in that environment is not a substitute for seeing your primary care doctor. The people who work there are all APRN (FNP-C).
aside from an easy way to waste your time and money
pretty affordable for what they offer; actually waiting for appointment with primary MD/DO for 6 weeks and then having to take half a day off from work is a bigger waste of time for those who have to work for a living.
Also, most of the people working at minute clinic are female; so naturally, that means you will get better care.
MisdemeanorRebel
2016 Dec 20, 8:27am
My anecdotal experience was different.
I remember the time I had a virulent Stomach infection. I had collapsed at a Subway thinking I was dehydrated and hungry, but fainted on line. They thought I was on drugs. Went to a clinic, the lady doc at the clinic dismissed me, practically rolling her eyes with a 'wasting my time' attitude, and told me I had a stomach virus. Cost $80, I waited 30 minutes for the blood pressure/weight thing, and another hour for somebody to see me there.
The next day I had to be helped into a taxi by the driver and the doorman to get to the hospital. Within 10 minutes they diagnosed me with a bacteria infection. They gave me Amox or something and within an hour or so I felt much better and was discharged. By the second pill in the evening I was almost totally cured. The doctor at the hospital told me if I went another 24 hours I might have been dead or in a coma. Cost $2000.
A few weeks later I got a call from the CDC asking me if I had been to a third world country recently. Don't remember the name of the bacteria, but my GF at the time was a Nursing Home Nurse and I got it from her. Bedridden terminal people are like bags of breeding bacteria.
Dan8267
2016 Dec 20, 8:32am
I do have one conjecture regarding why female doctors may be better than male doctors if that is the case. Most male doctors go into the business just for the money and prestige. They don't usually actually care about their patients. Patients are just cows to be milked. I don't know whether or not the same holds true for most female doctors, but women do tend to be more nurturing than men, and actually caring about the outcome for the patient rather than just the payment could make a material difference. This, of course, is just a conjecture and would require a study to investigate. And, of course, statistical gender dichotomies do not imply that every person fits into the gender stereotype.
I remember the time I had a virulent Stomach infection
Sounds like you had a sickness that couldn't wait 6 weeks for primary visit and above and beyond scope of minute clinic. Many urgent care facilities (those with in house lab) could probably handle that.
If you have emergency like this in future, probably good to go to emergency, since very few doctors can see you in their clinic on such short notice.
Was it legionella?
The lady doc at the clinic dismissed me
she probably doesn't know anything.
MisdemeanorRebel
2016 Dec 20, 8:59am
Sounds like you had a sickness that couldn't wait 6 weeks for primary visit and above and beyond scope of minute clinic. Many urgent care facilities (those with in house lab) could probably handle that.
If you have emergency like this in future, probably good to go to emergency, since very few doctors can see you in their clinic on such short notice.
Was it legionella?
Hi MMR, it was an urgent clinic, I was a single bachelor, no Primary Care Physician. I was actually shocked because they DID have an in-house lab.
OH, I had another bad experience with a Female Physicians Assistant at an urgent care. She was like "Do you want a male doctor... do you want a male doctor... do you want a male doctor..." and I was like "I'm fine, no problem" multiple times. It was as if to say "I don't want to investigate your suspected STD, I'm unprofessional. Sit here and wait 30 minutes for the male doctor."
Ceffer
2016 Dec 20, 9:56am
Female docs run away frightened and hysterical when a medical condition upsets them, so less doctoring=fewer dead patients. Male docs dive in and pull the clock apart.
Patients are just cows to be milked.
I got milked by a female doctor once, but she wasn't a real doctor.
That is a possible significant lurking variable. If male doctors are taking patients that are more likely to die in the first place
There are more critical care doctors and general surgeons (surgeons of all stripes, really) that are male. Anesthesiology has increased number of females but is still 62% male.
Pediatrics, OB/GYN (moderately high risk field/high risk field), Family medicine have female majorities.
I was actually shocked because they DID have an in-house lab
If it was a suspected STD, they should be able to figure it out. Seems like a relatively basic primary care concern that usually doesn't need an Infectious Diseases physician.
Does a surgeon have a perverse incentive to not operate on the people who need operations the most because they are also more likely to die and thus bring down the doctors success ratio and reputation?
this is 'wave of near future' with reimbursement being tied to outcomes in the ACO system
MisdemeanorRebel
2016 Dec 21, 8:08am
If it was a suspected STD, they should be able to figure it out. Seems like a relatively basic primary care concern that usually doesn't need an Infectious Diseases physician.
MMR, the in-house lab was at the clinic I went for my stomach problem. My beef with the female doc and my suspected STD was that she didn't want to deal with me at all and pass me on to a male physician. Really, it's not like she was going to do anything but arrange some blood work, it was just a garden-variety UTI
Dan8267
2016 Dec 21, 10:35am
I got milked by a female doctor once, but she wasn't a real doctor.
She wasn't a real female either.
Dan8267
2016 Dec 21, 10:37am
My beef with the female doc and my suspected STD was that she didn't want to deal with me at all and pass me on to a male physician.
Obviously she was a lesbian, probably an immense hirsute one.
Ceffer
2016 Dec 21, 10:49am
Can we make female doctors wear push up bras and nurse's uniforms, just to keep things from getting confusing?
Shaman
2016 Dec 21, 1:27pm
Of you consider that the grand majority of surgeons are male, and if people are going to die as a result of medicine, surgery is their best bet, its rather amazing that the gap is only 4%! Using the same warped logic as the journalist who penned this article, you'd have nearly equal chances of surviving a cardiac operation as a visit to your local clinic for a bad case of the flu!
When all you look at is one factor, it's impossible to claim causality from a simple correlation.
Clearly the writer is no scientist.
I got milked by a female doctor once, but she wasn't a real doctor.
She wasn't a real female either.
I'm so confused now.
Want to save 32,000 lives a year? Get male doctors to practice more like women.
Updated by Julia Belluz@juliaoftorontojulia.belluz@voxmedia.com Dec 19, 2016, 11:10am EST
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“Your chances of dying are lower if your doctor is a woman,†Harvard’s Ashish Jha, one of the co-authors on the study and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, summed up. Markus Mainka/Shutterstock
Female physicians earn less than male doctors. And now it seems that they may actually deliver better health care for patients in certain situations.
In a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers from Harvard University wanted to explore whether the sex of the doctor matters when it comes to patient outcomes. A small body of studies has already shown that the gender of the doctor can influence the quality of care patients get, but so far there’s been little research on what that means for mortality risk.
The researchers focused on elderly Medicare patients in hospitals from 2011 through 2014, looking at 30-day mortality data on more than 1.5 million hospitalizations. They also looked at about the same number of readmissions to hospitals within 30 days of discharge in the same time period. Their specific aim: to see whether the patients treated by women were more or less likely to die or be readmitted than those treated by men.
It turns out the patients treated by women had a 4 percent lower risk of dying prematurely and a 5 percent lower risk of being readmitted to a hospital within 30 days compared with the patients cared for by male doctors. In absolute terms, that means the mortality risk went from 11.5 percent among the patients of male doctors to about 11.1 percent among the patients of female doctors.
The gap in readmission rates was similar: 15 percent for female doctors, and 15.6 percent for male doctors.
Overall, the researchers deduced that the sex of the doctor seemed to have an influence on the risk of patient death. "Your chances of dying are lower if your doctor is a woman," Harvard’s Ashish Jha, one of the co-authors on the study and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, summed up.
The finding is particularly meaningful at the level of population health, Jha explained. "If male physicians achieved the same outcomes as female physicians do, we would save about 32,000 lives a year — and that’s just in the Medicare population. That’s about how many people die from motor vehicle accidents."
To understand what other factors (besides gender) may influence the different health outcomes, the researchers controlled for a number of doctor and patient variables. The patients of male and female doctors were similar, but men saw more patients on average and had more experience than their female peers. When the researchers controlled for these differences, however, female doctors still performed better.
There were a couple of important limitations to this study. First, it was observational research, which means it can only tell us about an association and not cause and effect. Second, there may be other variables the researchers didn’t control for — differences in the socioeconomic status of the patients, for example — that explain their major finding.
So the study can’t offer a clear explanation for this apparent female edge, but Jha thinks one clue may come from why he and his colleagues conducted this research in the first place. "There are about a dozen studies out there that suggest women seem to practice differently than male physicians," he said. "They practice in a more evidence-based manner, they stick more closely to clinical guidelines, they communicate more effectively with patients."
Only one other US study looked at the association between the sex of the doctor and patient mortality (this time, in a small cohort of outpatients), and it found gender didn’t seem to make a difference. But other research on the quality of care patients get has consistently found that gender matters, and female doctors often have an edge on their male peers.
"I think it’s those practice differences that probably explain the results we have," Jha added. "If I’m right on that, it’s good news for those of us who are male doctors, because those are things we can learn."