Special articlesAre patients more likely to see physicians of the same sex? Recent national trends in primary care medicine
Section snippets
Methods
We analyzed data from the 1995 to 2000 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS), an annual survey of non–federally funded office-based physicians conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Hyattsville, Maryland. The survey is based on a multistage probability sample design, and a sampling weight is calculated for each visit that can be used to extrapolate to national estimates. We had access to additional confidential data on physician age and sex that were not
Results
We analyzed 92,389 patient visits with available data on physician age and sex, representing an estimated 3 billion patient visits in the United States from 1995 to 2000. Within primary care, women comprised 59% of all visits and the proportion of visits by women did not change significantly over time (60% in 1995 and 59% in 2000, P = 0.64 for trend). The proportion of visits to female physicians varied by specialty: pediatrics (33%), dermatology (21%), psychiatry (20%), primary care (15%),
Discussion
We found that female primary care physicians in the United States were more likely than their male counterparts to see female patients, a difference that appeared to increase over time. By 2000, four of every five visits to female primary care physicians were from women. Further, female physicians were substantially more likely to report performing preventive health services when seeing female patients, particularly when the services were specific to women. Sex concordance between patients and
Acknowledgment
The authors are indebted to Negasi Beyene at the National Center for Health Statistics for his help with the data, and to Roger B. Davis, ScD, for his statistical expertise.
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Dr. Fang was supported by a National Research Service Award 5T32HP11001-14.