Thursday, October 11, 2018

Doctors shouldn’t be picked based on where they went to medical school

Most times, where a doctor went to medical school in the U.S. doesn’t predict how well that doctor’s patients will do, a new study suggests.

Researchers who looked at outcomes of nearly one million hospitalizations managed by more than 30,000 physicians found no difference in patients’ risks of death or hospital readmission according to where their doctor’s medical school fell in the U.S. News & World Report medical school rankings, according to the report in The BMJ.

U.S. News & World Report has published medical school rankings since 1983. The rankings take into account the school’s reputation, research activity, and acceptance rate. Rankings also depend on peer scoring by school deans and residency directors, as well as student grade point average and admission test scores.

“There are ample anecdotes suggesting that both patients and physicians may use the ranking of the medical school a physician graduated from as a signal of provider quality,” said lead study author Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa of the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine.

 

“We don’t think patients need to pick a doctor based on that $30-$40 difference,” Tsugawa said.

“What we do every day as doctors isn’t what we learned in medical school, which is the foundation. What we practice daily is what we learned during residency years,” said Dr. Mario Guadino of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. Guadino, who wasn’t involved with this study, has researched the characteristics of cardiothoracic surgeons practicing at top-ranked U.S. medical institutions.

“Overall, this study gives a reassuring message,” he told Reuters Health by phone. “There’s not a lot of fragility in the level of care you will get, and you don’t need to be concerned about your doctor’s medical school education when you go to the hospital.”

According to Daniel Tancredi of the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento:

“These rankings are meant to inform students about where they should go for medical school,” he told Reuters Health by phone. “That’s a different question than determining the best medical school for patients.”

 

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