physicians productivity?

One of the questions this morning was "are there gender differences in the "productivity" of physicians?".

We were left fretting and fuming about this one. Some gender differences were discussed, but the the term that was used for measuring this was "productivity". This is a plastic word, and it remained pretty shapeless and squishy all through the segment.

Our question is" What does it mean that Conrad Black's toy, the National Post, headlined a study about the differences in hours of work as "productivity"? . The whole hype is a case of sensationalized headline.

According to the stats given, women doctors work fewer hours than men doctors, but the issue of actual productivity was not adressed.

What IS productivity for a physician? Number of hours worked, and amount billed to the government cannot be a measure of productivity.

We need to know how many patients were seen, and what is the overall health of these patients.

In our household, the real question is whether people actually have time to get to their physician to have regular 'physicals'.