Published Mar 13, 2026 | 12:00 PM ⚊ Updated Mar 13, 2026 | 12:00 PM
Representational image. Credit: iStock
Synopsis: A large-scale study of 286,196 teleconsultations in India found that patients reported lower satisfaction when matched with doctors of the same gender, overturning assumptions about gender concordance. The strongest predictor of recovery was communication quality, not demographics. Exceptions emerged in intimate specialties like gynaecology, where female patients with female doctors reported better outcomes. Researchers urge platforms to prioritise empathy training over gender-matching algorithms.
Think about the last time you opened a telemedicine app and clicked your way to a doctor. Did you notice their name? Their photograph? Did you, even for a moment, glance at whether the person on the other side of the screen shared your gender, and feel either reassured or unsettled by the answer?
You are not alone in that instinct. Healthcare researchers have spent years building evidence that patients feel more at ease, more listened to, more understood, when their doctor shares their gender. The logic seemed sound. Shared experience breeds trust. Trust breeds better care.
A new study out of the Goa Institute of Management (GIM) has torn that assumption apart, at least when it comes to seeing a doctor on a screen.
Dr Nafisa Vaz, an assistant professor in healthcare management at GIM, and Dr Vishalkumar Jani from Practo Technologies sat down with 2,86,196 anonymised teleconsultation records, two years of virtual doctor visits, stretching from January 2023 to December 2024, across 20 medical specialties, spanning a country of 1.4 billion people.
What they found published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research stops you mid-scroll: patients who consulted doctors of the same gender reported lower satisfaction. Not higher. Lower.
Of the 286,196 consultations, 60.4 percent involved a patient seeing a doctor of the same gender. And yet, those same-gender pairs consistently trailed on satisfaction scores compared to mixed-gender pairs. The finding held across the full dataset and reached statistical significance.
“Gender concordance did not uniformly enhance satisfaction or recovery. In fact, nonconcordant dyads reported higher satisfaction, challenging existing evidence and expectations of demographic matching improving healthcare experiences,” said the authors.
Picture a man in his 30s, sitting in his bedroom in Hyderabad at 10 in the morning. He has a persistent cough. He books a teleconsultation. The algorithm routes him, automatically, no choice involved, to a female physician. He did not ask for her. He had no particular expectation.
She listens. She asks questions he did not expect. She communicates in a way that feels less clinical, more considered. He ends the call rating the experience a five out of five.
The researchers call this the “expectation-surprise” effect. When male patients consult female doctors, their initial expectations sit low, not through malice, but through ingrained cultural conditioning about who commands authority in a white coat. When those expectations shatter on impact with reality, satisfaction spikes.
“Male patients interacting with female physicians frequently experience their expectations being exceeded, particularly in the domains of interpersonal communication and empathy,” said the authors. “Female doctors are consistently highlighted for their superior listening, attentiveness, and clarity, which not only challenge prevailing gender stereotypes but also foster increased trust and comfort among male patients.”
The reverse also held: female patients rated male doctors higher overall, again linked to a widely absorbed cultural perception of men occupying technical roles. In India, where gender norms run deep, those inherited assumptions travel right into the app.
“Digital health cannot be culturally neutral,” Dr Nafisa Vaz, said in statement.
There is one corner of the data where the story bends back the other way.
In gynaecology, female patients who consulted female doctors were 4.5 times more likely to report that they had recovered, measured through a follow-up survey sent 21 days after the consultation. In a specialty that asks women to discuss reproductive health, menstruation, pregnancy, intimate symptoms, the presence of a same-gender doctor shifted something real in the outcome.
The researchers interpret this carefully. India carries layers of modesty, stigma, and silence around women’s health. A woman who does not feel judged will describe her symptoms more fully. A doctor who receives the full picture treats more accurately. Recovery follows.
“In close-contact specialties such as gynaecology and urology, gender concordance can be prioritised,” said the authors. “Patient autonomy needs to be incorporated into telehealth platform design.”
Here, the study lands its most striking finding of all.
The strongest single predictor of whether a patient reported recovering was not the doctor’s gender. Not their years of experience. Not the length of the consultation. It was whether the patient felt satisfied with how that doctor communicated during the call.
Patients who rated their consultation highly were 20 times more likely to report recovery than those who did not. That number belongs in a different sentence, so here it is again: twenty times.
Not a doctor who trained for a decade. Not a specialist with grey at the temples. A doctor who made the patient on the screen feel heard.
“Patient satisfaction emerged as the strongest factor linked to self-reported recovery, underscoring how crucial trust, empathy, and clear communication are in virtual consultations,” said the authors.
India’s telemedicine sector runs on algorithms. When you type “stomach ache” into a health app at midnight, a piece of code routes you to a doctor based on availability and specialty. Gender does not currently factor into most of those decisions.
Some platforms have considered building gender-preference matching, the idea that patients should see a doctor who looks like them. This study says: pause before you build that.
For most specialties, the data does not support it. In areas like dermatology and ear, nose and throat consultations, gender concordance actually corresponded with lower satisfaction. In general medicine, which covers nearly a quarter of all consultations in this dataset, gender played no meaningful role at all.
What the researchers recommend instead: train doctors in communication and empathy, particularly for telemedicine settings where a camera and a microphone replace the warmth of a room. Reserve gender-preference options for specialties where intimacy and sensitivity genuinely shape outcomes, gynaecology and urology among them. And build platforms that let patients choose, rather than platforms that choose for them.
“Training in active listening and patient engagement can be preferred tools over demographic alignment through matching algorithms,” said the authors. “Gender-sensitive and empathy-focused communication training can be considered for medical practitioners to build trust with patients.”
The researchers are careful not to export these findings wholesale. The West’s telemedicine literature operates in a different cultural register, one where gender norms in healthcare function differently, where patients carry different assumptions into the consultation room, virtual or otherwise.
India’s patients arrive at a teleconsultation shaped by a society that has historically gendered care, the male surgeon, the female nurse, the lady doctor you visit for “those problems.” Those shapes do not disappear because the consultation moves to a phone screen. They travel with the patient.
What this study demonstrates is that understanding those shapes, rather than assuming they always push in one direction, produces better healthcare design.
“Our analysis of 286,000 teleconsultations revealed a concordance paradox,” Dr Vaz said. “In India, gender dynamics shape virtual care in complex, specialty-dependent ways, and platform design must reflect that reality.”
