Is Patient–Physician Gender Concordance Related to the Quality of Patient Care Experiences?

Background There is great interest in identifying factors that are related to positive patient experiences such as physician communication style. Documented gender-specific physician communication and patient behavior differences raise the question of whether gender concordant relationships (i.e., b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM 2021-10, Vol.36 (10), p.3058-3063
Main Authors: Prasad, Taara, Buta, Eugenia, Cleary, Paul D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Gender
Government programs
Health care
Health Care Surveys
Humans
Internal Medicine
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Mental health
Original Research
Patient Care
Patient Satisfaction
Physician-Patient Relations
Physicians
Polls & surveys
Primary care
Questions
Regression analysis
Regression models
Statistical analysis
United States
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Summary:Background There is great interest in identifying factors that are related to positive patient experiences such as physician communication style. Documented gender-specific physician communication and patient behavior differences raise the question of whether gender concordant relationships (i.e., both the provider and patient share the same gender) might affect patient experiences. Objective Assess whether patient experiences are more positive in gender concordant primary care relationships. Design Statewide telephone surveys. Linear mixed regression models to estimate the association of CAHPS scores with patient gender and gender concordance. Subjects Two probability samples of primary care Medicaid patients in Connecticut in 2017 (5/17–7/17) and 2019 (7/19–10/19). Main Measures Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CG-CAHPS) survey augmented with questions about aspects of care most salient to PCMH-designated organizations and two questions to assess access to mental health services. Key Results There were no significant effects of gender concordance and differences in experiences by patient gender were modest. Conclusions This study did not support the suggestion that patient and physician gender and gender concordance have an important effect on patient experiences.
ISSN:0884-8734
1525-1497
DOI:10.1007/s11606-020-06411-y