It’s the Christmas season, so wait to do this until the New Year, but . . . be sure to fire your male doctor.
He’s a quack.
At least, that seems to be the gist of James Hamblin’s “Evidence of the Superiority of Female Doctors,” a report in The Atlantic on a new Harvard School of Public Health study.
“Patients cared for by female physicians,” Hamblin writes, “had lower 30-day mortality than did patients treated by male physicians.” The rate for female physicians was 11.07 percent and for males 11.49 percent.
Though a “modest” difference, it’s still “clinically meaningful.”
The study (conducted by an all-male team) tracked more than 1.5 million Medicare patients treated by nearly 60,000 general internists.
“If male physicians were as adept as females, some 32,000 fewer Americans would die every year — among Medicare patients alone,” concludes Hamblin. “[T]hese numbers may be what it takes to spur equal (or better) compensation and opportunity for female physicians.”
NBC News played the equal pay angle as well: “Many hope the new study pushes hospitals to promote and pay women equally.”
Still, in a poignant moment of concern for the lesser sex, correspondent Kristen Dahlgren advised, “Maybe not a reason to ditch your male doctor, but there might be lessons to learn from his female colleagues.”
Indeed, the study explained that “physician sex by itself does not determine patient outcomes,” arguing instead that “differences in practice patterns between male and female physicians” must be investigated.
Smart.
The other thing, of course, is that every doctor, male or female, is an individual — not merely an XX- or XY-chromosome carbon copy.
Sex isn’t everything.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
