Female doctors apparently do better than male doctors in treating elderly patients, and if male doctors were as good as females, this improved care by male doctors could wind up saving 32,000 lives a year.

A study of 1.5 million hospital visits published in the magazine JAMA Internal Medicine showed that a month after patients were hospitalized, there was a small but significant difference in the likelihood they were still alive, or had to be readmitted to the hospital depending on the gender of the doctor that cared for them.

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The four year-long study, however, can't prove the gender of the physician was the determining factor, but it did make multiple efforts to rule out other explanations.

The estimate that 32,000 patients' lives could be saved in the Medicare population in the United States alone is about equal to the number of deaths from motor vehicle accidents each year.

"If we had a treatment that lowered mortality by 0.4 percentage points or half a percentage point, that is a treatment we would use widely. We would think of that as a clinically important treatment we want to use for our patients," said Ashish Jha, professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Many previous studies have suggested women doctor and male doctors practice medicine differently. Women doctors are more likely to follow clinical guidelines and counsel patients on preventive care. Women doctors are also communicate more than men.

The study found that patients treated by a female doctor had less than half of a percentage point difference in the likelihood they would die within a month of their hospitalization. There was a similar drop in patients having to go back to the hospital over that month. These aren't large differences.

Jha said that major health policies aimed at decreasing mortality in hospitals and increasing patient safety resulted in a similar drop in mortality over a decade.

Tagsfemale doctors, male doctors, more lives saved, JAMA Internal Medicine, Ashish Jha