TUESDAY, May 30, 2023 (HealthDay News) — The quality and costs of care are similar for allopathic and osteopathic hospitalists caring for Medicare patients, according to a study published online May 30 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Atsushi Miyawaki, M.D., Ph.D., from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles, and colleagues conducted a retrospective observational study using Medicare claims data to examine whether quality and costs of care differ for hospitalized Medicare patients treated by allopathic or osteopathic physicians. Overall, 329,510 admissions for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries hospitalized with a medical condition during 2016 to 2019 were included: 77.0 and 23.0 percent received care from allopathic and osteopathic physicians, respectively.

The researchers observed no important differences in quality and costs of care between allopathic and osteopathic physicians for patient mortality (adjusted mortality, 9.4 versus 9.5 percent), readmission (15.7 versus 15.6 percent), length of stay (4.5 versus 4.5 days), and health care spending ($1,004 versus $1,003).

“These findings should be reassuring for policymakers, medical educators, and patients because they suggest that any differences between allopathic and osteopathic medical schools, either in terms of educational approach or students who enroll, are not associated with differences in quality or costs of care, at least in the inpatient setting,” the authors write.

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