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Patients of female gastroenterologists are less likely to use medical services than patients of male physicians
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
Patients who see a female gastroenterologist for an initial consultation are less likely to use health care services in the emergency department, hospital, or primary care office within two years of the visit compared with patients who initially consulted with male gastroenterologists, according to a study presented at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2024, May 18-21 in Washington, D.C.
“If there is indeed a difference in how female and male gastroenterologists provide health care that impacts patient outcomes, it will be important to widely disseminate this knowledge among health care providers to improve standards of care for all patients,” said lead author Laura Targownik, MD, a clinician-researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and director of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Toronto.
The researchers examined data from more than 2.7 million gastroenterology consultations between 2002 and 2020 from the Ontario Health IC/ES national database, of which 15% of consultations were performed by female gastroenterologists and 55% of patients were women.
Overall, female patients had higher rates of emergency department and primary care visits compared with male patients; however, when female gastroenterologists provided the initial consultation, subsequent utilization of all health care services was lower for all patients, regardless of gender, compared with patients who initially consulted with male gastroenterologists. Lower utilization of health care services after seeing a female gastroenterologist was more pronounced among female patients than among men.
"We need more research to understand what's causing this difference in patient outcomes," said Grace Wang, a gastroenterology resident at the University of Toronto.
“The next step is to look at patient data in more detail, including pre-existing conditions, patterns of healthcare use prior to the initial gastroenterology consultation, and diagnoses made during that consultation, to explore whether there are other factors that determine patients’ healthcare-seeking behaviour.”