CommonHealth: Study Finds Women Physicians Have Better Patient Outcomes

We've talked before on this show about the disparities between male and female physicians. For instance, the proportion of women who are full professors at medical schools hasn't changed in more than 30 years. Of course, that affects how much money they make.

"We find that women actually make about $20,000 less than male physicians within these public university medical schools," says Anupam Jena, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School.

But it's not just the pay that's different. A study released today in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that at least for some patients, you may fare better if your doctor is a woman. The researchers looked at over 1 million hospitalizations and found that women physicians had lower rates of 30-day mortality and hospital readmission than men.

Carey Goldberg, host of WBUR's CommonHealth, which tweets @commonhealth.