The Impact of Physician-Patient Gender Match on Healthcare Quality: An Experiment in China.

ABSTRACT: Despite growing evidence of gender disparities in healthcare utilization and health outcomes, there is a lack of understanding of what may drive such differences. Designing and implementing an experiment using the standardized patients' approach, we present novel evidence on the impact of physician-patient gender match on healthcare quality in a primary care setting in China. We find that, compared with female physicians treating female patients, the combination of female physicians treating male patients resulted in a 23.0 percentage-point increase in correct diagnosis and a 19.4 percentage-point increase in correct drug prescriptions. Despite these substantial gains in healthcare quality, there was no significant increase in medical costs and time investment. Our analyses suggest that th

SUBMITTER: Si Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10592995 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature