A UCLA Health study of 1.5 million emergency department visits suggests female doctors may approach diagnostic uncertainty differently than male colleagues.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Increased Resource Use: Female emergency department physicians ordered 3% to 5% more imaging and laboratory tests and admitted 3% to 5% more patients than their male counterparts.
- Clinical Appropriateness: The additional testing and admissions by female physicians were not associated with higher rates of unnecessary care or short inpatient stays.
- Mortality Outcomes: While female physicians utilized more resources, the study found no significant difference in patient mortality rates between male and female doctors.
Female emergency department (ED) physicians request more imaging and laboratory tests and admit more patients to the hospital than male physicians working in the same settings, according to a new UCLA Health study.
The research, which examined more than 1.5 million ED visits, found that while female physicians utilized more resources, the additional care was likely clinically appropriate and just as likely to uncover important findings as the care provided by male physicians.
“Our research finds that in the emergency department setting, female and male physicians may approach diagnostic uncertainty differently, and these differences don’t necessarily represent unnecessary care,” said Dan Ly, assistant professor of medicine, in a news release.
To conduct the study, researchers analyzed a database of ED visits by veterans and compared patients cared for by female physicians versus male physicians working in the same departments. The findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, showed that female physicians ordered 3% to 5% more laboratory and imaging tests, and hospitalized 3% to 5% more patients than male physicians.
The research team also used short inpatient stays as a marker for potentially unnecessary hospitalizations. The study found that patients hospitalized by female physicians were not more likely to have short inpatient stays than those treated by male physicians.
At the same time, the additional care provided by female physicians was not associated with lower mortality rates.
“We found no differences in mortality from this additional care, but mortality rates don’t tell the whole story,” said Ly, lead author of the study, in a news release.
The study authors noted that the findings raise questions about how physicians balance resource use and diagnostic uncertainty. Future research may explore the causes behind these differences, such as variations in risk aversion, and whether these patterns lead to differences in patient health that are not captured by mortality data, including quality of life and missed diagnoses.
