A UCLA Health study published on Jul. 20 found that female physicians in emergency departments request more imaging and laboratory tests and admit more patients to the hospital than their male colleagues working alongside them. The study analyzed over 1.5 million emergency department visits by veterans, comparing care provided by female and male physicians in the same settings.
Dan Ly, assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the VA Greater Los Angeles, said, "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." The researchers noted that although female doctors ordered 3 to 5% more laboratory and imaging tests and hospitalized 3 to 5% more patients than their male counterparts, this additional testing was just as likely to uncover important findings.
The team also used short inpatient stays as a marker for potentially unnecessary hospitalizations but found no significant difference between patients treated by female or male physicians. According to Ly, "We found no differences in mortality from this additional care, but mortality rates don't tell the whole story."
Previous studies have shown similar trends among primary care doctors ordering more diagnostic testing; however, this new research focused specifically on emergency department physicians where patient choice of doctor is limited.
The authors said these findings raise questions about how physicians balance diagnostic uncertainty with resource use. They suggested future research could explore causes for these differences—such as varying levels of risk aversion—and whether they impact aspects of patient health not measured by mortality statistics.
