When researchers looked at conditions that commonly bring patients to the hospital, they found international graduates had significantly lower mortality rates for pneumonia and congestive heart failure.

The non-U.S. doctors had lower mortality rates for most other conditions, too, but the difference wasn't big enough to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance.


There wasn't a meaningful difference in readmission rates, or the proportion of patients who returned to the hospital again within 30 days of being sent home.

The study isn't an experiment designed to prove whether doctors educated in the U.S. or other countries provide better care or help patients live longer, the authors note. Researchers also couldn't distinguish between foreign-born international medical school graduates and U.S. citizens who left the country to train overseas.

It's also possible that patients treated by foreign-trained doctors were different from people seen by U.S. medical school graduates in some ways that weren't detected in the study, said Dr. Vineet Arora, a researcher at the University of Chicago who wasn't involved in the study.

"I find the mortality difference hard to explain by educational or cultural differences alone, given the varied educational experiences and cultural backgrounds of international medical graduates," Arora added by email. "We do know that international doctors who gain entry into the US are often at the top of their class – so it’s certainly possible that this could explain the findings."


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2kBno94 BMJ, online February 3, 2017.

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