U.S. Women Physicians' Assessment of the Quality of Healthcare They Receive

Surveys of women's perceptions of quality and satisfaction with healthcare are widely administered and reported, yet no similar studies of women physicians' perceptions have been conducted. We analyzed related data from the Women Physicians' Health Study, a nationally representative sample of 4501 U.S. women physicians. Among U.S. women physicians, 39% thought the healthcare they personally received was excellent, 37% considered it to be very good, 19% good, 4% fair, and 1% judged their healthcare to be poor quality. Physicians may be especially rigorous judges of healthcare quality, and their assessment of the healthcare they receive is generally positive, an encouraging finding. However, as physicians are highly qualified to assess and potentially obtain high-quality healthcare and as they generally did not judge the care they received to be excellent, the findings also suggest that there are opportunities for improvements in the quality of women's healthcare.