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

Yafei Si, Gang Chen, Zhongliang Zhou, Winnie Yip and Xi Chen

No 1607, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

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. We present novel evidence on the impact of physician-patient gender match on healthcare quality using the standardized patients (SPs) method in an experiment. The experiment collected interactions between standardized patients and physicians in a primary care setting in China during 2017-2018. We find that, compared with female physicians treating female SPs, female physicians treating male SPs resulted in a 23.4 percentage-point increase in correct diagnosis and a 19.0 percentage-point increase in correct drug prescriptions. Despite these substantial gains in healthcare quality, there was no significant increase in medical costs or time investment. The gains in healthcare quality were partly attributed to better physician-patient communications, but not the presence of more clinical information. More importantly, female physicians treating male SPs prescribed more unnecessary tests but fewer unnecessary drugs to balance their time commitment and costs. The results suggest the potential role of cultural gender norms and physician defensive behavior when female physicians treat male SPs. Our findings imply that improving patient centeredness may lead to significant gains in the quality of healthcare with modest costs, while reducing gender differences in care quality.

Keywords: gender disparities; healthcare quality; standardized patient; experiment; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I12 I14 J16 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-exp, nep-gen, nep-hea and nep-lab
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Physician-Patient Gender Match on Healthcare Quality: An Experiment in China (2025)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1607

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