The Older the Doctor, the Higher the Patient Mortality Rate, Study Finds (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The age of your doctor may impact the quality of the care you receive -- and even cut your chances of survival -- researchers report in the British Medical Journal. Harvard researchers looked over data on more than 700,000 hospital admissions of elderly patients cared for by nearly 19,000 physicians between 2011 and 2014. They found that mortality rates crept up in step with physician age. Patients with doctors under the age of 40 had a 30-day mortality rate of 10.8 percent. With doctors aged 40 to 49, mortality rates inched up to 11.1 percent, then to 11.3 percent with doctors 50 to 59, and 12.1 percent with doctors aged 60 or above. The stats are adjusted for a variety of variables, such as hospital mortality rates and severity of patients' illnesses. All the patients were aged 65 or older and on Medicare. Though the age-related mortality trend was significant overall, it broke down when researchers sorted doctors by caseloads. Older doctors who saw high volumes of patients didn't see their patients' mortality rates increase.

Comments

Flawed study

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we know that older patients don't just like going to older doctors?

Re:Flawed study

[taustin]

It does seem likely. I'd guess they mostly have been seeing the same doctor for many, many years, and have no interest in changing.

Did they correlate the doctor's age with the patient's age? Do older doctors tend to see more older (and thus more likely to die soon) patients?

Re:Flawed study

[arth1]

How do we know that older patients don't just like going to older doctors?

RTFS?
"700,000 hospital admissions of elderly patients"

My personal guess is that older doctors might be a little better at weighing quality of life against longevity, while younger doctors might be following the book more, prolonging life no matter what the physical/mental/monetary cost to the patient is. That would explain why older doctors with a high workload didn't show the same drop in longevity - they won't have time to get to know each patients as well.
I know that when my time draws near, I hope I find a doctor that can help me have a good quality of life for my last few days or weeks, even if it's shorter. And preferably without bankrupting those I leave behind on expensive treatments that can only prolong agony.
So I'll likely try to find an older doctor with empathy.

Re:Flawed study

[AHuxley]

It could just be that paperwork, a catchment area and that people are happy with their existing Dr and know the transport to and are friends with the staff at their local Dr.
People and their complex conditions grow with their Dr and finally the a large amount of people on average over decades need a lot mores tests and expensive treatment on average.
Their existing older Dr they know for years looks after them and is their gateway to specialists and hospitals.

Why waste time looking at a Dr age. Look at who trained the Dr and what tests are been ordered.
Did a few really great university groups in a nation produce a generation of really skilled doctors that out preform all others?
Do doctors from other nations who shopped around for a nation to practice medicine in show very different results?
Passed the required local exams but patient outcomes are below average?
Also consider where old people live. Do old people move to new distant suburb with few services, buy a new home and find a new local doctor who is just starting their practice in a new suburb? Far from services they know, shops, family, friends, with all the new costs of a new house?
Or do older people have their homes paid for or a renting in nice existing area of a city with an existing Dr who has had their friendly local practice for decades?
The home is sold, a nursing home or retirement village is then found for more care and a different type of medical care.

Re:Flawed study

[ShanghaiBill]

A young Dr can also be very selective in the areas they want to practice ... An older doctor might serve a poor area

The study compared doctors working at the same hospital, and adjusted for patient household income.

So many possible confounds

[The Raven]

I run a Help Desk. The reps who do the most tickets are not the best. That's because the best reps can fix issues without escalating, but that takes time. Do doctors who take many patients mostly do the easy stuff? Are the doctors who take fewer patients specialists in their field, or handling more difficult cases that take more attention per patient?

Does seniority mean they take more difficult cases? Does seniority mean they care less about their malpractice insurance (because they are more secure financially)? Does seniority change which patients seek you out?

There are so many potential confounding reasons for this correlation that do not depend on the doctor being less capable or providing worse care in some manner. I'm not saying that there is no cause for concern... I'm saying that the study has potential confounds that its statistical groupings did not eliminate.