Study Reveals Significant Discrepancies in Physician Mortality Rates

The U.S. healthcare field has undergone rapid change in recent decades, with physicians and other healthcare workers facing increasing patient-care demands and levels of stress and burnout. A new study from researchers at Mass General Brigham healthcare system suggests that while physicians and other healthcare workers have lower mortality rates than non-healthcare workers, there are significant differences in mortality based on demographic factors including race, sex, and ethnicity, especially among physicians. Results are published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“Our findings reveal that being a physician doesn’t necessarily protect against the documented health disparities that exist in the United States,” said first author Vishal Patel, MD, MPH, of the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “The existence of these disparities within the medical profession raises questions about underlying workplace and societal factors that may be contributing.”

In this study, the researchers leveraged newly available data on occupational roles and mortality, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) beginning in 2020. The study population included all adults who died between 2020-2022 at ages of 25 to 74 years.

In the general population, the authors observed lower mortality in females compared to males for most occupations, including lawyers, engineers, and scientists. However, this well-documented mortality advantage for women was absent among physicians and reversed for several other types of healthcare workers. Female physicians experienced higher mortality than male physicians due to cancer and chronic lower respiratory diseases. In contrast, high-income women in non-healthcare occupations were found to have lower mortality due to these causes compared to men.

Racial disparities in physician mortality rates were particularly notable. The study revealed that the Black-white mortality gap is the widest among physicians, with the mortality rate approximately double for Black physicians compared to white physicians, adjusted for age and sex. This suggests that the advantages associated with being a physician — including greater access to health care, higher average income, and medical knowledge and resources — are insufficient to close the racial health divide. The researchers found this gap to be broader in physicians than in the general population, where Black adults had approximately a 70% higher mortality rate. Cancer, heart disease and COVID-19 were found to drive the mortality gap between Black and white physicians.

The researchers found Black female physicians exhibited the highest mortality rates compared to all other physician groups and that Black female physicians had higher mortality rates than white women in non-healthcare occupations. While Hispanic workers had overall better mortality than white workers in non-healthcare occupations, this pattern was reversed for several healthcare occupations, including physicians.

“We need to understand what’s driving these discrepancies and implement targeted interventions,” said corresponding author Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, of the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. “The healthcare system cannot afford to ignore the well-being of its workforce. Addressing these disparities is a necessity for sustaining the health of those who care for us all.”

Authorship: In addition to Patel and Jena, other Mass General Brigham authors include Christopher M. Worsham, Fatima Cody Stanford and Ishani Ganguli.

Disclosures: Worsham reported grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality during the conduct of the study as well as consulting fees from Alosa Health, Analysis Group, Atheneum, Berkshire Hathaway Home Companies, Chronius, FVC Health, GLG, Guidepoint, NuvoAir, Ogilvy, Philips, Simbo, and Tell Health and authorship income from Doubleday Books, Substack, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal outside the submitted work. Stanford reported personal fees from Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Amgen, Currax, MelliCell, Vida Health, Life Force, Doximity, GoodRx, MelliCell, Vida Health, Ilant Health, Calibrate, and Empros Pharma outside the submitted work. Ganguli reported personal fees from FPrime outside the submitted work. Jena reported personal fees from Analysis Group, Freakonomics MD, Doubleday Books, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Harry Walker Agency, and AAE outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.

Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (K08HS029197), the National Institute on Aging (K23AG068240), the National Institutes of Health (NIDDK P30 DK04056, UE5 DK137285 [FCS] and U24 DK132733[FCS]).

Paper cited: Patel V. R. et al. “Mortality Among US Physicians and Other Health Care Workers” JAMA Internal Medicine DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.8432