A study published in January 2026 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) has reported that teleconsultations involving doctors and patients of the same gender may be associated with lower patient satisfaction. The analysis was based on a large dataset from India.1
Researchers from the Goa Institute of Management analysed 286,196 teleconsultations conducted via the Practo platform across India between January 2023 and December 2024. The study was led by Dr. Nafisa Vaz, Assistant Professor of Healthcare Management at GIM, along with Dr. Vishalkumar Jani, Head of Research at Practo. The data were obtained from a national telemedicine platform and included consultations across multiple medical specialties.
The study population included adult patients, and all data were anonymised prior to analysis, in line with research and privacy standards.
The study found that 60.4% of consultations involved gender-concordant interactions, where the doctor and patient shared the same gender. The remaining consultations were gender-discordant.
Patient satisfaction was assessed using a five-point scale, with scores of 4 and 5 classified as high satisfaction. Overall, 91.3% of patients reported high satisfaction with their teleconsultations.
The analysis showed that gender-concordant consultations were associated with lower satisfaction compared to gender-discordant consultations.
This association remained statistically significant after adjusting for factors such as consultation duration, physician experience, and timing.
Even though a difference was observed, most patients in both groups still reported high satisfaction.
Researchers also evaluated self-reported recovery at a 21-day follow-up. The study found that gender concordance did not independently predict recovery outcomes. Patient satisfaction was identified as the strongest factor associated with reported recovery.
In certain specialties, including gynecology, female patients consulting female doctors showed higher odds of reporting recovery. However, follow-up data for these observations were limited.
The authors noted that these specialty-specific findings should be interpreted cautiously due to smaller subgroup sample sizes.
The dataset included consultations from 20 specialties such as dermatology, psychiatry, gynecology, and urology, providing a broad overview of telemedicine practices in India.
The study used statistical models to examine the relationship between gender concordance and patient outcomes while controlling for multiple variables. The results were based on anonymized data and large-scale analysis of teleconsultations.
They checked whether the lower satisfaction was really due to gender matching, and not because of other differences like type of cases or consultation quality.
The findings suggest that factors beyond gender, such as communication style, clarity of advice, and overall interaction quality, may have a greater influence on patient satisfaction in telemedicine.
Expectations, comfort levels, and communication dynamics in virtual settings may differ from in-person consultations, potentially influencing satisfaction trends.
This large-scale analysis provides insight into how virtual healthcare differs from in-person care and highlights the need for further research to better understand patient preferences in digital health settings.
1. Vaz, Nafisa, and Vishalkumar Jani. 2026. “Gender Concordance and Patient Outcomes in Indian Telemedicine: Retrospective Cross-Sectional Quantitative Study of 286,000 Consultations.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 28: e78311. https://doi.org/10.2196/78311.
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